Follow-Up Biomarkers in the Evolution of Prostate Cancer, Levels of S100A4 as a Detector in Plasma

The management and screening of prostate cancer (PC) is still the main problem in clinical practice. In this study, we investigated the role of aggressiveness genetic markers for PC stratification. We analyzed 201 plasma samples from PC patients and controls by digital PCR. For selection and validation, 26 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues, 12 fresh tissues, and 24 plasma samples were characterized by RNA-Seq, immunochemistry, immunofluorescence, Western blot, and extracellular-vesicles analyses. We identified three novel non-invasive biomarkers; all with an increased expression pattern in patients (PCA3: p = 0.002, S100A4: p <= 0.0001 and MRC2: p = 0.005). S100A4 presents the most informative AUC (area under the curve) (0.735). Combination of S100A4, MRC2, and PCA3 increases the discriminatory power between patients and controls and between different more and less aggressive stages (AUC = 0.761, p <= 0.0001). However, although a sensitivity of 97.47% in PCA3 and a specificity of 90.32% in S100A4 was reached, the detection signal level could be variable in some analyses owing to tumor heterogeneity. This is the first time that the role of S100A4 and MRC2 has been described in PC aggressiveness. Moreover, the combination of S100A4, MRC2, and PCA3 has never been described as a non-invasive biomarker for PC screening and aggressiveness.Ministry of Health, Andalusia Government Leonardo de la Pena 2020 research grant - Urology Research Foundation (FIU) PI-0319-201

Determination of Expression Signature and Proportion of mtDNA in Plasma Fractions in Patients with Renal Cell Carcinoma

Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) is the third most common urologic malignancy, remaining one of the most lethal urological malignancies, preferably in developed countries. The incidence and mortality rates differ significantly according to sex, race, age and external factors such as smoking, obesity and hypertension increasing RCC risk. The use of novel predictive biomarkers is currently being increased as these improve the diagnosis, progression and prognosis of RCC. Since recent studies have demonstrated a promising association between mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number alteration in peripheral blood and the risk of developing RCC, we conducted a case-control study into a cohort of 15 controls and 13 patients to determine exosomes mtDNA content in plasma fractions as a potential novel non-invasive biomarker in liquid biopsy in order to monitor the RCC status in patients. In this way, plasma fractions highly purified in exosomes were obtained from blood samples from controls and RCC cases, and relative mtDNA content was measured by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Our results show fragment size distribution profile and we observed that in phase F; with a higher content of exosomal mtDNA; p value shows statistically significant differences in mitochondrial genes HV long and CYB long