Abstract
Background: In a previous study, we identified the ABCD3 gene as important in aggressive prostate tumors. The ABCD3 gene is a member of the ABC (ATP-Binding Cassette) family. The ABC gene family give instructions for making transporter proteins that carry many types of molecules, such as fats, sugars, protein building blocks (amino acids) and drugs, across cell membranes and is known to play a role in chemoresistance is some cancers.
Purpose: Little is known about role of ABCD3 in prostate cancer, hence in the present study we assessed the expression of ABCD3 in normal and malignant prostate tissue (without regard to racial ethnicity) and determined correlations between ABCD3 expression and clinicopathologic characteristics.
Methods: Clinically annotated duplicate core tissue high-density prostate adenocarcinoma tissue microarray of 92 cases of adenocarcinoma, 2 prostate transitional cell carcinoma, 12 prostate adjacent normal tissue and 8 normal prostate tissue were stained with a monoclonal antibody against ABCD3 and scored for percentage of visible staining.
Results: Increased ABCD3 expression correlated with increasing Gleason score (p=0.0094), age (p=0.0014) and pathology grade (p=0.0007). Interestingly, we also observed that ABCD3 expression was elevated to varying degrees in other types of cancers, breast (stage II a), brain, cervical, head and neck, kidney and pancreatic.
Conclusions: We postulate that ABCD3 may be a putative prognostic biomarker that discriminates between indolent and aggressive cancers, albeit ABCD3 function in cancer progression is still under investigation.
Citation Format: R. Renee Reams, Jacqueline D. Jones, Daniel Osborne, Honghe Wang, Clayton C. Yates, III. ABCD3 expression in prostate and breast tumors. [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 C70. doi:10.1158/1538-7755.DISP13-C70