Prostate cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, but biomarkers that can predict outcome following treatment are urgently needed to identify patients with aggressive disease. In an effort to identify biomarkers of recurrence, we have performed global RNA-sequencing on 106 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) prostatectomy samples from 100 patients at three independent sites, and identified a new set of biomarkers of biochemical recurrence composed of a 24-gene panel including 22 protein-coding genes and two non-coding genes. We observed excellent correlation between TaqMan and RNAseq values, as well as for RNAseq between replicate libraries. We validated this 24-gene panel on an independent publicly available dataset of 140 patients and this new panel outperformed previously published markers based on cell proliferation gene sets. In addition, we have identified genes that are differentially expressed between African-American and Caucasian prostate cancer patients, and mitochondrial SNPs that are associated with both race and outcome. We observed a number of genes relevant to prostate cancer biology including ETV5, ZEB1, ZEB2, B2M, FYN, and miR-183 that were differentially expressed between African-American and Caucasian patients. These genes may play a role in the disparities observed in African-American patients who have significantly worse outcomes relative to Caucasian patients with prostate cancer.

Citation Format: Jianpeng Xu, Qi Long, Adeboye O. Osunkoya, Soma Sannigrahi, Brent A. Johnson, Wei Zhou, Theresa Gillespie, Jong Y. Park, Robert K. Nam, Linda Sugar, Aleksandra Stanimirovic, Arun K. Seth, John A. Petros, Carlos S. Moreno. Global transcriptome sequencing of ethnically diverse formalin-fixed patient samples identifies biomarkers of recurrence in prostate cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Sixth AACR Conference: The Science of Cancer Health Disparities; Dec 6–9, 2013; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2014;23(11 Suppl):Abstract nr C68. doi:10.1158/1538-7755.DISP13-C68