Metsälä Olli, Wahlström Gudrun, Goel Neha, Miihkinen Mitro, Taimen Pekka, Schleutker Johanna
Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
FICAN West Cancer Center, University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland.
J Pathol. 2025 Apr;265(4):518-531. doi: 10.1002/path.6405. Epub 2025 Feb 20.
Prostate cancer (PrCa) is highly prevalent in the Western world. Currently, however, there are many unmet needs in PrCa care, for example in distinguishing between clinically significant and indolent cases in early phases of the disease. ANO7 is a prostate-specific gene associated with PrCa risk and prognosis, but its exact function in the prostate remains unclear. This study investigates the role of ANO7 in benign prostatic epithelium using spatial transcriptomics by examining differences between ANO7-expressing and non-expressing epithelial regions and their corresponding stromal compartments. A total of 18,676 protein-coding genes were assessed from prostatectomy samples collected from patients with localised prostate cancer. In the collected sample cohort, ANO7 exhibited a distinct, heterogeneous, on-off epithelial expression pattern, enabling an in-depth analysis of ANO7-dependent processes. ANO7-positive epithelium was predominantly enriched with luminal epithelial cells and a specific NK cell subtype, CD56bright. In contrast, ANO7-negative regions were characterised by enrichment of club cells, inflammation, and features of proliferative inflammatory atrophy. Gene-set enrichment analysis revealed that ANO7 expression is associated with androgen receptor (AR) signalling and lipid metabolism. A detailed analysis of differentially expressed genes identified an ANO7- signature, which consisted of genes co-expressed with ANO7 in luminal cells, that demonstrated high consistency in bulk RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) data. The ANO7-signature was enriched for AR-regulated genes, which highlighted lipid metabolism processes, particularly arachidonic acid metabolism, as a key metabolic feature of the ANO7-positive epithelium. Furthermore, the ANO7-signature demonstrated clinical significance in low-grade PrCa, correlating with a better response to therapy. In summary, these results highlight the potential role of ANO7 in regulating lipid metabolism associated with androgen signalling in benign luminal cells and low-grade cancer, reinforcing the hypothesis that ANO7 functions as a tumour suppressor. © 2025 The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
前列腺癌(PrCa)在西方世界极为普遍。然而,目前在PrCa护理方面存在许多未满足的需求,例如在疾病早期区分具有临床意义的病例和惰性病例。ANO7是一种与PrCa风险和预后相关的前列腺特异性基因,但其在前列腺中的具体功能仍不清楚。本研究通过检查表达ANO7和不表达ANO7的上皮区域及其相应的基质区室之间的差异,利用空间转录组学研究ANO7在良性前列腺上皮中的作用。从局部前列腺癌患者的前列腺切除样本中评估了总共18676个蛋白质编码基因。在收集的样本队列中,ANO7呈现出一种独特的、异质性的、开-关上皮表达模式,从而能够深入分析ANO7依赖的过程。ANO7阳性上皮主要富含腔上皮细胞和一种特定的自然杀伤细胞亚型CD56bright。相比之下,ANO7阴性区域的特征是棒状细胞富集、炎症以及增殖性炎症萎缩的特征。基因集富集分析表明,ANO7表达与雄激素受体(AR)信号传导和脂质代谢相关。对差异表达基因的详细分析确定了一个ANO7特征,该特征由在腔细胞中与ANO7共表达的基因组成,在批量RNA测序(RNA-seq)数据中显示出高度一致性。ANO7特征富含AR调节基因,突出了脂质代谢过程,特别是花生四烯酸代谢,作为ANO7阳性上皮的关键代谢特征。此外,ANO7特征在低级别PrCa中具有临床意义,与对治疗的更好反应相关。总之,这些结果突出了ANO7在调节与良性腔细胞和低级别癌症中的雄激素信号传导相关的脂质代谢中的潜在作用,强化了ANO7作为肿瘤抑制因子发挥作用的假设。© 2025英国和爱尔兰病理学会。