Immunohistological analysis of ABCD3 expression in Caucasian and African American prostate tumors

In a previously published study, we showed that expression of the ABCD3 gene increased with increasing metastatic potential in a panel of prostate cancer cell lines derived from African American and Caucasian American men. Given importance of identifying biomarker(s) that can distinguish indolent versus aggressive prostate tumors, we conducted an immunohistochemical analysis of ABCD3 expression Caucasian and African American prostate tumors. ABCD3 expression in each patient population was compared with clinicopathologic characteristics, Gleason score, and age. ABCD3 expression increased with increasing Gleason score (P = 0.0094), age (P = 0.0014), and pathology grade (P = 0.0007) in Caucasian patients. Interestingly, in the AA patients, ABCD3 expression highly increased to the same degree in both low and high Gleason score tumors. Similarly, ABCD3 expression was elevated to the same degree in BPH derived from AA. Our findings demonstrate that increased ABCD3 expression correlates with Gleason Score in CA prostate tumors. However, in AA prostate tumors, ABCD3 expression was higher and was sustained in both low Gleason and high Gleason AA tumors. While the functional role of ABCD3 in prostate cancer is not completely elucidated, this gene warrants further study as a potential biomarker for aggressive prostate.