Molecular and Clinical Relevance of ZBTB38 Expression Levels in Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in men. A number of genomic and clinical studies have led to a better understanding of prostate cancer biology. Still, the care of patients as well as the prediction of disease aggressiveness, recurrence and outcome remain challenging. Here, we showed that expression of the gene ZBTB38 is associated with poor prognosis in localised prostate cancer and could help discriminate aggressive localised prostate tumours from those who can benefit only from observation. Analysis of different prostate cancer cohorts indicates that low expression levels of ZBTB38 associate with increased levels of chromosomal abnormalities and more aggressive pathological features, including higher rate of biochemical recurrence of the disease. Importantly, gene expression profiling of these tumours, complemented with cellular assays on prostate cancer cell lines, unveiled that tumours with low levels of ZBTB38 expression might be targeted by doxorubicin, a compound generating reactive oxygen species. Our study shows that ZBTB38 is involved in prostate cancer pathogenesis and may represent a useful marker to identify high risk and highly rearranged localised prostate cancer susceptible to doxorubicin.