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Revision for manuscript CMJ20121939 Title Page ADAM9 expression is decreasing in castration resistant prostate cancer and is a prognostic factor for overall survival All authors: LIN Guo-wen*, YAO Xu-dong*, YE Ding-wei, ZHANG Shi-lin, DAI Bo, ZHANG Hai-liang and MA Chun-guang * These two authors contributed equally to this paper. Department of Urology, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Shanghai 200032, China(Lin GW, Yao XD, Ye DW, Zhang SL, Dai B, Zhang HL, Ma CG) Department of Oncology, Fudan University Shanghai Medical College, Shanghai 200032, China (Lin GW, Yao XD, Ye DW, Zhang SL, Dai B, Zhang HL, Ma CG) Correspondence to: YE Ding-wei, Department of Urology, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Shanghai 200032,China; Department of Oncology, Fudan University Shanghai Medical College, Shanghai 200032, China (Tel: 86-21-64175590 ext.1807. Fax: 86-21-64438640. E-Mail: [email protected]) This work was supported by Shanghai Cancer Center Foundation, the Natural Science Foundation of China (No.30973009), and the Shanghai National Natural Science Foundation (No.11ZR1407400). Conflict of interest: none. 1 Abstract Background A disintegrin and metalloprotease 9 (ADAM9) as one membrane-anchored enzyme which is considered to be involved in some diseases including tumor, but it is still not clear that the role of ADAM9 in castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). In this study, we tried to explore the different expression on protein and messenger RNA (mRNA) level of ADAM9 between hormonal sensitive prostate cancer (HSPC) and CRPC, and find the correlation with prognosis. Methods We collected and analyzed clinicopathologic characteristics of 106 HSPC and 76 CRPC cases, for which ADAM9 expression was compared by Immunohistochemistry. ADAM9 mRNA of 32 additional cases(16 HSPC and 16 CRPC patients) were analysed via quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The prediction values of variables for overall survival (OS) of CRPC patients were analyze by Cox regression. Results ADAM9 protein expression was significantly downregulated in CRPC compared with HSPC tissue (31.6% vs. 81.1%, P<0.001). The relativity transcription level of ADAM9 mRNA was 0.45 vs. 1.0 for CRPC and HSPC tissues, P=0.002. For CRPC group, patients with ADAM9 protein low expression were significantly associated with shorter OS than patients with high expression (38.6 months vs. 57.8 months, hazard rate [HR]=2.638, P=0.023). Conclusions ADAM9 was low expression in CRPC correlated with poor prognosis and might be involved in the succession from HSPC to CRPC by various functions. Hope to have more large scale experiments to externally confirm our inference. 2 Key words: ADAM9; castration resistant prostate cancer; immunohistochemistry; qRT-PCR; prognostic factor Although the quality of life has been improved and survival has been prolonged by the hormonal therapy as the first treatment option for patients with advanced prostate cancer1, 2, hormonal therapy is not a cure for prostate cancer and most patients are inevitable to develop hormonal resistant disease with prostate specific antigen (PSA) relapse and disease progression. Unfortunately, effective treatment options for castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) are limited.3-6 Scholars try to explore the hormonal resistance mechanism and some hypotheses profile part of prospect.7-9 In view of hormonal resistance is a complex process in which wide variety of cytokines and signaling pathways are involved, the entire picture is still ambiguous. Cell-cell interaction mediated by various cytokines change or mutant in the microenvironment always induce a lot of cascade reaction and play an important role of 3 affecting tumorigenesis, tumor cell survival, proliferation and invasion. In addition, membrane-anchored enzymes such as matrix metalloproteinases and a disintegrin and metalloproteinase (ADAM) family have critical action in the proteolytic processing of various membrane bound molecules including growth factors, receptors and adhesion molecules during the cell-cell interaction.10, 11 Therefore, ADAMs are considered to be involved in some diseases including tumor.12, 13 In recent few years, ADAM9 was found to play a significant role in tumorigenesis and progression where it was dysregulated.14-16 However, until now the effect of ADAM9 in CRPC is not clear. The present study aimed to explore the expression of ADAM9 in CRPC, particularly focused on the relationship with overall survival. METHODS Patients A group of 182 patients with prostate adenocarcinoma were enrolled in the present study, including 106 patients with hormonal sensitive prostate cancer (HSPC) and 76 cases of CRPC from 2004 to 2011 at Shanghai Cancer Center of Fudan University in China . All these patients’ characteristics were collected according to the clinical records and shown in Table 1. Patients with CRPC were all in advanced stage with bone metastasis at diagnosis and failure of first-line and second-line hormonal therapy with disease progression and PSA increase. The definition of CRPC met the criteria of European Association of Urology Guidelines.17 HSPC patients receive radical prostatectomy (n=50) 4 and androgen deprivation therapy (n=56) after diagnosis. All patients came to cancer center for evaluation of disease and survival status every 4-6 weeks regularly. Immunohistochemistry 182 prostate cancer tissues for these patients were obtained from tissue bank of Shanghai Cancer Center. In addition, 30 tissues with benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) as control group were enrolled in this cohort. 50 HSPC tissues were from radical prostatectomy specimens, whereas all CRPC and BPH tissues, and 56 cases of HSPC tissues were obtained from transurethral prostatic resection. Tissue obtaining was conducted with ethical approval of the local ethical committee. Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue was freshly cut (4 mm), gradually hydrated through xylene and ethanol. Antigen retrieval was achieved by pressure cooking at 97 centigrade in ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (PH=8.0) for 10min. Slides were washing thrice for 5 min in phosphate buffered saline and transferred to 3% H2O2 for 10 min to block endogenous peroxidase activity. The primary ADAM9 antibody (primary rabbit polyclonal antibody, AF949, R&D Systems, Wiesbaden of Germany18 was diluted 1:20 with the use of a background reducing dilution buffer (Dako) and incubated overnight at room temperature. Immunohistochemical analyses of ADAM9 were performed using labeled streptavidin biotin method (LSAB kit, Dako) and diaminobenzidine(DAB, Dako) served as chromogen. The slides were conventionally counterstained with haematoxylin and mounted. ADAM9 positive prostate cancer cases omitting the primary antibody was 5 considered as negative control. The immunostainings were evaluated independently by two pathologists, who unknew patient pattern. The staining intensity(including cytoplasmic diffuse, the polar and luminally accentuated form) was evaluated by semi-quantitative grading system, as negative, weak, moderate or strong.18 The final results, however, were recorded as low (negative and weak staining) or high (moderate and strong staining) expression. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction Total RNA was prepared with TRIzol (Invitrogen, Cat#. 15596018) from manually micro-dissected areas for 16 cases of HSPC and CRPC fresh tissue, respectively. DNase I treatment and reverse transcription were performed with TaKaRa RNA PCR Kit (AMV) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was carried out and analyzed on a Mx3000P Quantitative PCR System (Stratagene) using the ABsolute QPCR SYBR Green Mixes (ABgene, Cat#. AB-1166/b) according to the standard protocol. The primer sequences of ADAM9 were 5’-CAGATGGCAAAAATCAAGCA-3’ and 5’-GATGGGAACTGCTGAGGTTG-3’. GAPDH was used as internal control with the primers sequences of 5’-TGACAACTTTGGTATCGTGGAAGG-3’ and 5’-GCAGGGATGATGTTCTGGAGAG-3’. Statistical analysis Data in this study included the following variables: age, clinical T, N and M stage, initial 6 PSA, biopsy Gleason score. In addition, for patients with CRPC, we collected nadir PSA during former hormonal therapy, baseline PSA, alkaline phosphatase and hemoglobin at the beginning of CRPC stage. The Mann-Whitney U test and Χ 2 test was applied to identify the characteristics difference between patients with CRPC and HSPC. The relationships between ADAM9 expression and patients’ characteristics were analyzed using Spearman’s rank correlations. The univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis were used to assess the prognostic value of various variables to overall survival (OS) for patients with CRPC. The median OS was computed using the Kaplan–Meier method. The differences in OS were assessed by a log-rank test. The cut-off points of continuous variables including PSA at diagnosis, nadir PSA and baseline PSA at CRPC were evaluated by the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) and the Youden index, which is a good measure of diagnostic effectiveness, calculated by sensitivity+specificity-1.19, 20 When the maximal index occurs at the cut-point, it will optimize the variable’s differentiating ability. P value of <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant difference. All statistical calculations were computed by using SPSS version 13.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL). RESULTS Patients characteristics The clinical and pathological variables for 182 prostate cancer patients were shown in Table 1. There were no missing data for these variables except clinical T and N stage 7 because of the lack of records at diagnosis. Furthermore, only clinical M stage was association with ADAM9 protein expression for HSPC patients (P<0.001, Table 2). The median duration of follow-up was 48.3 months (range, 13–90 months). In CRPC group, 34.2% (26/76) patients had received chemotherapy based on docetaxel with average of 7.3 cycles. Other could not use the chemotherapy agent because of eld(17.1%), inadequate organ functions(9.2%) and only used other chemotherapy strategy(39.5%). At the end of follow-up, 73.3% (56/76) cases of CRPC died. Decrease expression of ADAM9 protein in CRPC tissue ADAM9 protein expression was found in CRPC, HSPC and BPH tissue. The membranous and cytoplasmic was immunoreactivity staining as expected of a transmembrane protein of ADAM9. Connective tissue, stromal tissue and vessels were negative for ADAM9 (Figure 1A, 1B, 1C). Compared to BPH tissue with ADMA9 high expression of 10.0% (3/30), 81.1% (86/106) of HSPC cases had high expression of ADAM9, there were significantly statistical difference between them, P<0.001. However, the percentage of high expression dramatically decreased to 31.6% (24/76) for patients with CRPC, which was significantly lower than HSPC tissue, P<0.001(Figure 1D). Decrease transcription of ADAM9 mRNA in CRPC tissue In quantitative RT-PCR test, we defined the relativity transcription level of ADAM9 mRNA in HSPC tissue was one (standard error±0.122). Thus the relativity transcription level in CRPC tissue was only 0.45 (standard error ± 0.106), 75% (12/16) tissue samples 8 transcription were less than the relativity value (Figure 1F). The outcome showed that transcription of ADAM9 mRNA in CRPC tissue was significantly decreased compared to that in HSPC tissue, P=0.002 (Figure 1E). ADAM9 expression correlations with overall survival times At the end of follow-up, the median OS for 76 patients with CRPC was 44.3 months (range, 21.6-86.0 months). Most variables entered into the survival analysis by univariate and multivariate Cox regression method. On the Cox regression analysis, ADAM9 protein expression, baseline hemoglobin at CRPC and docetaxel chemotherapy were finally identified as the predictors of OS for these patients (Table 3). The median PFS was 38.6 months for those with ADAM9 low expression, compared with 57.8 months in ADAM9 high expression. The median PFS for patients who had baseline hemoglobin of ≥120g/L and <120g/L were 56.3 months and 38.1 months, respectively. Patients with docetaxel chemotherapy had a median PFS of 49.9 months and the PFS in those without docetaxel chemotherapy decreased to 38.3 months. Additional analyses about the survival probability of ADAM9 protein expression was further described in Figure 2. DISCUSSION ADAMs are membrane anchored glycoprotein family constructed by the protease and adhesion domains multifunctional proteins, and contributed to the proteolytic processing of 9 other transmembrane proteins, cell adhesion and cell signaling events during the cell-cell interaction and considered to be association with cancers.10, 11 ADAM9 is an important member of ADAM family and its dysregulated has been described in various solid tumors and involved in the tumorigenesis. Most scholars reported that ADAM9 had been ascribed important roles in invading their surrounding and metastasizing to distant organs.21, 22 Thus, knockdown of ADAM9 resulted in reduced cellular migration and invasion.14 Other functions of ADAM9, in fact, also contributed to cancer development and progression. First, ADAM9 promoted pathological tumor vascularization.23 Second, ADAM9 has an essential role in the transition from well-differentiated to poorly-differentiated carcinomas.24 Moreover, ADAM9 was a key factor in regulating upstream and downstream cytokines such as epidermal growth factor receptor and E-cadherin attached to various signaling pathways.25, 26 In the present study, we found ADAM9 higher expression in HSPC than BPH tissue, which was similar to other reports.18 Furthermore, this study was designed to validate the difference of ADAM9 expression in CRPC compared to the results for HSPC by immunohistochemisty and quantitative RT-PCR. We noted that CRPC tissue displayed a lower staining intensity in cancer cells than HSPC tissue (low expression rate: 68.4% vs. 18.9%, P<0.001). The quantitative RT-PCR experiment further confirmed this phenomenon and also showed that ADAM9 mRNA reduced in transcription level in CRPC tissue. 10 The relationship between the ADAM9 expression pattern in CRPC and the survival probability was tested in survival analysis. By using a multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression, ADAM9 expression was certified as an independent prognostic factor of survival for CRPC patient. The lower expression of ADAM9, the worse OS for CRPC patients were. Baseline hemoglobin and docetaxel chemotherapy presence were considered as other two predictors of OS in the study, which was also confirmed by former literatures.27, 28 The focus was that when prostate cancer transited from hormonal sensitiveness to castration resistance, why the expression of ADAM9 was down regulation. As is known to all, one of the main actions of ADAM9 in tumorigenesis is involved in metastasis.21, 22, 29 We observed that in the present study, all patients with CPRC had existence of metastasis but only 31.6% (24/76) of cases was high expression of ADAM9. The expression heterogeneity seemed to reveal that ADAM9 might play other crucial roles in the succession from HSPC to CRPC. One possible explanation for the phenomenon was that ADAM9 was more prominent in the role of information access and cell communication, instead of promoting metastasis. As described above, previous research articles confirmed that ADAM9 also assumed the role of some signaling pathway ligands or receptors.30 It meant that when ADAM9 expression reduced, related signaling pathways enabling the transmission of information 11 might be missing or disorders, so as to induce some inconvertible exacerbations such as cell differentiation from well differentiate to poor differentiate.11 It ultimately accelerated the disease progression. CONCLUSIONS CRPC is a complex and heterogeneous tumor and the entire procedure of mechanism is still cryptic. Our study suggested that ADAM9 was low expression in CRPC correlated with poor prognosis and might be involved in the succession from HSPC to CRPC by various functions. Hope to have more large scale experiments to confirm our inference. 12 REFERENCE 1. Quon H, Loblaw DA. Androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer-review of indications in 2010. Curr Oncol 2010; 17 Suppl 2: S38-S44. 2. 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Part II: Treatment of advanced, relapsing, and castration-resistant prostate cancer. Eur Urol 2011; 59: 572-583. 18. Fritzsche FR, Jung M, Tolle A, Wild P, Hartmann A, Wassermann K, et al. ADAM9 expression is a significant and independent prognostic marker of PSA relapse in prostate cancer. Eur Urol 2008; 54: 1097-1106. 19. Schisterman EF, Perkins NJ, Liu A, Bondell H. Optimal cut-point and its corresponding Youden Index to discriminate individuals using pooled blood samples. Epidemiology 2005; 16: 73-81. 20. Ruopp MD, Perkins NJ, Whitcomb BW, Schisterman EF. Youden Index and optimal cut-point estimated from observations affected by a lower limit of detection. Biom J 2008; 50: 419-430. 21. Kenney S, Vistica DT, Stockwin LH, Burkett S, Hollingshead MG, Borgel SD, et al. ASPS-1, a novel cell line 13 manifesting key features of alveolar soft part sarcoma. J Pediatr Hematol Oncol 2011; 33: 360-368. 22. Caltabiano R, Grillo C, Nane S, Messina A, Serra A, Leonardi R, et al. ADAM-9 expression in intestinal-type adenocarcinoma of the sinonasal tract. Appl Immunohistochem Mol Morphol 2011; 19: 283-287. 23. Guaiquil V, Swendeman S, Yoshida T, Chavala S, Campochiaro PA, Blobel CP. ADAM9 is involved in pathological retinal neovascularization. Mol Cell Biol 2009; 29: 2694-2703. 24. Peduto L, Reuter VE, Shaffer DR, Scher HI, Blobel CP. Critical function for ADAM9 in mouse prostate cancer. Cancer Res 2005; 65: 9312-9319. 25. Singh B, Schneider M, Knyazev P, Ullrich A. UV-induced EGFR signal transactivation is dependent on proligand shedding by activated metalloproteases in skin cancer cell lines. Int J Cancer 2009; 124: 531-539. 26. Hirao T, Nanba D, Tanaka M, Ishiguro H, Kinugasa Y, Doki Y, et al. Overexpression of ADAM9 enhances growth factor-mediated recycling of E-cadherin in human colon cancer cell line HT29 cells. Exp Cell Res 2006; 312: 331-339. 27. Berthold DR, Pond GR, Soban F, de Wit R, Eisenberger M, Tannock IF. 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Patients Characteristics Variables CRPC Group (n=76) Age at diagnosis(yr) Median 67.0 Range 56-80 Initial PSA(ng/mL) Median 40.0 Range 13.0-142.0 Clinical T stage(No.) T2 42 T3 25 T4 0 TX 9 Clinical N stage(No.) N0 57 N1 10 NX 9 Clinical M stage(No.) M0 0 M1 76 Biopsy Gleason score(No.) 6 13 7 24 8 10 9 17 10 12 ADAM9 protein expression(No.) Low 52 High 24 nadir PSA (ng/mL) Median 1.7 Range 0-44.5 Baseline PSA at CRPC(ng/mL) Median 36.0 Range 0.9-360.0 Baseline alkaline phosphatase at CRPC(IU/L) Median 103.0 Range 53.0-612.0 hemoglobin at CRPC(g/L) Median 115.0 Range 93.0-196.0 HSPC Group (n=106) P value 0.117* 70.0 56-89 73.9 3.0-489.5 0.100* 0.088† 60 34 7 5 0.124† 74 26 6 <0.001† 69 37 0.065† 6 33 26 27 14 <0.001† 20 86 / / / / / / / / 15 * Mann-Whitney U test was used for continuous variables; † Χ2 test was for Categorical variables 16 Table 2. ADAM9 protein expression patterns correlated with clinicopathological variables of prostate cancer CRPC (n=76) ADAM9 low expression Age at diagnosis (yr) median value Initial PSA (ng/mL) median value Clinical T stage (No.) T2 T3 T4 Clinical N stage (No.) N0 N1 Clinical M stage (No.) M0 M1 Biopsy Gleason score (No.) 6 7 8 9 10 nadir PSA (ng/mL) median value Baseline PSA at CRPC (ng/mL) median value Baseline alkaline phosphatase at CRPC (IU/L) median value Baseline hemoglobin at CRPC (g/L) median value ADAM9 high expression HSPC (n=106) P value ‡ ADAM9 low expression ADAM9 high expression 0.639 69 67 67 42 68 0.500 61.4 82.1 0.533 12 9 0 30 16 0 0.085 15 5 0 45 29 7 0.410 19 2 38 8 0.910 15 5 59 21 / 0 24 0 52 0.038 17 3 52 34 0.083 0 8 4 10 2 13 16 6 7 10 0.918 2 5 5 6 2 4 28 21 21 12 0.413 0.2 1.7 0.608 1.5 5.8 0.965 53.1 18.7 0.392 18.7 11.2 0.384 129 103 0.855 96 96 0.824 115 115 ‡ 0.515 0.746 43 P value 0.121 100 102 ‡ The relationships between ADAM9 expression and patients’ characteristics were analyzed using Spearman’s rank correlations. 17 Table 3. Cox proportional hazards analysis of various clinical and pathologic characteristics on correlating with overall survival for patients with CRPC Univariate analysis Age at diagnosis (year) Initial PSA (ng/mL) Clinical T stage Clinical N stage Biopsy Gleason score ADAM9 expression Nadir PSA (ng/mL) Baseline PSA at CRPC (ng/mL) Docetaxel chmeotherapy Baseline hemoglobin at CRPC (g/L) Baseline alkaline phosphatase at CRPC (IU/L) Multivariate analysis <67 vs ≥67 <40 vs ≥40 T2 vs T3+T4 N0 vs N1 <8 vs ≥8 low vs high <0.2 vs ≥0.2 P value 0.348 0.223 0.858 0.355 0.855 0.006 0.609 HR(95% CI) 1.291(0.757-2.202) 0.712(0.413-1.229) 1.056(0.581-1.919) 0.681(0.302-1.537) 1.050(0.619-1.782) 2.497(1.308-4.765) 0.869(0.507-1.490) P value 0.378 0.163 0.692 0.653 0.915 0.023 0.887 HR(95% CI) 1.457(0.631-3.366) 0.576(0.266-1.249) 0.823(0.314-2.158) 0.792(0.287-2.188) 0.956(0.416-2.196) 2.638(1.143-6.091) 0.950(0.473-1.911) <45 vs ≥45 0.323 1.310(0.767-2.239) 0.326 1.388(0.721-2.670) No vs Yes 0.002 2.457(1.399-4.329) 0.038 2.288(1.047-5.000) <120 vs ≥120 0.016 2.013(1.140-3.555) 0.005 3.279(1.420-7.575) <130 vs ≥130 0.367 1.288(0.744-2.229) 0.249 1.580(0.726-3.437) Note: Clinical M stage was not added in this analysis, because all CRPC patients had metastasis. 18 Figure 1. Immunohistochemisty and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) on ADAM9 for benign prostate hyperplasia, hormonal sensitive prostate cancer and castration resistant prostate cancer. (A), (B), (C) was enlarged 400 times. (A) benign prostate hyperplasia; (B) hormonal sensitive prostate cancer; (C) castration resistant prostate cancer; (D) different ADAM9 protein expression in three groups ; (E) histogram result of RT-PCR; (F) scatter plot result of RT-PCR. 19 Figure 2. A comparison of overall survival curve between patients with ADAM9 high expression and low expression. The median PFS was 57.8months in patients with ADAM9 high expression, compared to 38.6months in patients with ADAM9 low expression. 20