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Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Yeast As a Chassis for Developing Functional Assays to Study Human P53
Published on: August 4, 2019
Single-nucleotide polymorphisms in p53 pathway and aggressiveness of prostate cancer in a Caucasian population
Tong Sun1, Gwo-Shu Mary Lee, William K Oh
1Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
Purpose:
The tumor suppressor p53 plays a crucial role in maintaining genomic stability and tumor prevention. Mdm2, Mdm4, and Hausp are all critical regulators of the p53 protein. Despite the importance of the p53 pathway in prostate cancer development and progression, little is known about the association of functional single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the p53 pathway genes and prostate cancer aggressiveness.
Experimental Design:
In this study, we analyze the association of SNPs in p53, Mdm2, Mdm4, and Hausp genes with prostate cancer clinicopathologic variables in a large hospital-based Caucasian prostate cancer cohort (N = 4,073).
Results:
We found that the Mdm2 SNP309 T allele was associated with earlier onset prostate cancer (P = 0.004), higher Gleason scores (P = 0.004), and higher stages in men undergoing a radical prostatectomy (P = 0.011). Both the Mdm4 and Hausp SNPs (rs1380576 and rs1529916) were found to be associated with higher D'Amico risk prostate cancer category at the time of diagnosis (P = 0.023 and P = 0.046, respectively). Mdm4 SNP was also found to be associated with higher Gleason score at radical prostatectomy (P = 0.047). We did not observe any statistically significant association between the p53 Arg72Pro polymorphism and prostate cancer aggressiveness or pathologic variables.
Conclusions:
These results suggested the importance of these p53 regulators in prostate cancer development and progression.
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