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Sandy Srinivas, MD
Sandy Srinivas, MD
Posted: Tuesday, September 6, 2022
A ferroptosis-related long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) risk signature may be used as a tool to predict biochemical recurrence in patients with prostate cancer, according to a report in BMC Cancer. Ming Chen, MD, of Affiliated Zhongda Hospital of Southeast University, Jiangsu, China, and colleagues said theirs may be the first research of its kind in prostate cancer, and they confirmed that a signature based on five ferroptosis-related lncRNAs performed well in predicting biochemical recurrence. The novel strategy may prove to be clinically useful.
Specifically, “AP006284.1, AC132938.1, BCRP3, and AL135999.1 were upregulated in prostate cancer cells and tissues, whereas AL360181.4 exhibited the opposite trend,” the study authors reported.
Dr. Chen and co-investigators based their work on data from 495 patients with prostate cancer in The Cancer Genome Atlas. The patient group classified as being at high risk using the ferroptosis-related lncRNA signature had higher disease grades and a greater number of infiltrating immune cells. Learning that the five ferroptosis-related lncRNAs may relate to typical immune checkpoints is a discovery the team called its most important finding, because it could help inspire new immunotherapy options.
Earlier work had revealed that ferroptosis—a recently identified type of regulated iron-dependent cell death—has a relationship with tumorigenesis and immune cell infiltration; in addition, lncRNAs—each of which has more than 200 nucleotides and cannot encode proteins—seemed to be involved in cancer progression as well. “The [particular] mechanisms influencing the expression of the ferroptosis-related lncRNAs in prostate cancer remain unknown…, [and] additional basic experiments are needed to determine [them],” stated the investigators.
Still, their work did not appear in a vacuum: Previously, some of these lncRNAs have been reported as contributors to development of other cancers, such as AP006284.1 in colorectal cancer and BCRP3 in lung adenocarcinoma.
Disclosure: The study authors reported no conflicts of interest.
