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Updated: Apr 22, 2026
Microarray-based Identification of Individual HERV Loci Expression: Application to Biomarker Discovery in Prostate Cancer
Published on: November 2, 2013
Further evaluation of uPA and PAI-1 as biomarkers for prostatic diseases
John Akudugu1, Antonio Serafin, Lothar Böhm
1Division of Radiobiology, Department of Medical Imaging and Clinical Oncology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Tygerberg, 7505, South Africa, jakudugu@sun.ac.za.
Purpose:
To assay for uPA and PAI-1 in prostate tissue from 40 patients with prostatic disease and to examine the robustness of the correlation of the uPA/PAI-1 ratio with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and prostate cancer (PCa), previously identified in a different cohort of 62 patients.
Methods:
uPA and PAI-1 were extracted from liquid N2 frozen homogenised prostate tissue with TRIS/Triton pH 8.5 buffer and measured by ELISA (FEMTELLE).
Results:
The concentration of uPA (mean ± SD) was found to be 0.1177 ± 0.0266 (range 0.0070-0.7200; n = 30) and 0.1092 ± 0.0130 (range 0.0040-0.7800; n = 70) for PCa and BPH patients, respectively. The concentration of PAI-1 was found to be 5.236 ± 0.688 ng/mg protein (range 1.10-15.19; n = 30) and 4.975 ± 0.501 ng/mg protein (range 0.20-25.00; n = 70) for PCa and BPH patients, respectively. The mean uPA/PAI-1 ratio was found to be 0.0479 ± 0.0060 (range 0.0043-0.1200; n = 30) in PCa samples and was significantly higher than BPH samples where the ratio was 0.0332 ± 0.0023 (range 0.0040-0.0860; n = 70) (P = 0.0064). In PCa patients older than 68 years, the uPA/PAI-1 ratio was above 0.050 reaching 0.100 in 73-year-old patients.
Conclusions:
Evaluation of 100 patients with prostatic pathologies (70 PCa; 30 BPH) shows the uPA/PAI-1 ratios in PCa patients to be significantly higher than in BPH patients. This is fully consistent with a previous study on 62 patients (16 were PCa; 46 BPH) where the ratios were 0.055 and 0.031 for PCa and BPH patients, respectively (P = 0.0028). In older PCa patients, uPA/PAI-1 ratios tend to be higher.
