title: Microarray analysis identifies a death-from-cancer signature predicting therapy failure in patients with multiple types of cancer.
abstract: Activation in transformed cells of normal stem cells' self-renewal pathways might contribute to the survival life cycle of cancer stem cells and promote tumor progression. The BMI-1 oncogene-driven gene expression pathway is essential for the self-renewal of hematopoietic and neural stem cells. We applied a mouse/human comparative translational genomics approach to identify an 11-gene signature that consistently displays a stem cell-resembling expression profile in distant metastatic lesions as revealed by the analysis of metastases and primary tumors from a transgenic mouse model of prostate cancer and cancer patients. To further validate these results, we examined the prognostic power of the 11-gene signature in several independent therapy-outcome sets of clinical samples obtained from 1,153 cancer patients diagnosed with 11 different types of cancer, including 5 epithelial malignancies (prostate, breast, lung, ovarian, and bladder cancers) and 5 nonepithelial malignancies (lymphoma, mesothelioma, medulloblastoma, glioma, and acute myeloid leukemia). Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated that a stem cell-like expression profile of the 11-gene signature in primary tumors is a consistent powerful predictor of a short interval to disease recurrence, distant metastasis, and death after therapy in cancer patients diagnosed with 11 distinct types of cancer. These data suggest the presence of a conserved BMI-1-driven pathway, which is similarly engaged in both normal stem cells and a highly malignant subset of human cancers diagnosed in a wide range of organs and uniformly exhibiting a marked propensity toward metastatic dissemination as well as a high probability of unfavorable therapy outcome.
authors.affiliation: Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, San Diego, California 92121, USA. gglinsky@skcc.org
authors.forename: Gennadi V
authors.initials: GV
authors.lastname: Glinsky
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Berezovska
authors.forename: Anna B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Glinskii
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D014411:Neoplastic Stem Cells / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D009687:Nuclear Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D063150:Polycomb Repressive Complex 1; D011379:Prognosis; D011518:Proto-Oncogene Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D012097:Repressor Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; C489421:Bmi1 protein, mouse; D009687:Nuclear Proteins; D011518:Proto-Oncogene Proteins; D012097:Repressor Proteins; D063150:Polycomb Repressive Complex 1