Departments of Pathology Urology, Erasmus University Medical Centre, PO Box 2040, 2000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Endocr Relat Cancer. 2014 May 6;21(3):R143-52. doi: 10.1530/ERC-13-0390. Print 2014 Jun.
Prostate cancer is very common in elderly men in developed countries. Unravelling the molecular and biological processes that contribute to tumor development and progressive growth, including its heterogeneity, is a challenging task. The fusion of the genes ERG and TMPRSS2 is the most frequent genomic alteration in prostate cancer. ERG is an oncogene that encodes a member of the family of ETS transcription factors. At lower frequency, other members of this gene family are also rearranged and overexpressed in prostate cancer. TMPRSS2 is an androgen-regulated gene that is preferentially expressed in the prostate. Most of the less frequent ETS fusion partners are also androgen-regulated and prostate-specific. During the last few years, novel concepts of the process of gene fusion have emerged, and initial experimental results explaining the function of the ETS genes ERG and ETV1 in prostate cancer have been published. In this review, we focus on the most relevant ETS gene fusions and summarize the current knowledge of the role of ETS transcription factors in prostate cancer. Finally, we discuss the clinical relevance of TMRPSS2-ERG and other ETS gene fusions in prostate cancer.
在发达国家，老年男性中前列腺癌很常见。揭示导致肿瘤发生和进行性生长的分子和生物学过程，包括其异质性，是一项具有挑战性的任务。基因 ERG 和 TMPRSS2 的融合是前列腺癌中最常见的基因组改变。ERG 是一种致癌基因，编码 ETS 转录因子家族的成员。在较低频率下，该基因家族的其他成员也在前列腺癌中发生重排和过表达。TMPRSS2 是一种雄激素调节基因，在前列腺中优先表达。大多数较少见的 ETS 融合伙伴也是雄激素调节和前列腺特异性的。在过去的几年中，基因融合过程的新概念已经出现，并且已经发表了一些初步的实验结果，解释了 ETS 基因 ERG 和 ETV1 在前列腺癌中的功能。在这篇综述中，我们重点介绍了最相关的 ETS 基因融合，并总结了 ETS 转录因子在前列腺癌中的作用的现有知识。最后，我们讨论了 TMPRSS2-ERG 和其他 ETS 基因融合在前列腺癌中的临床意义。
