Germline mutations in the ribonuclease L gene in families showing linkage with HPC1

Cytogenetics and molecular genetics of cancer of the prostate

Prostate cancer remains the most common male malignancy in Western countries and the second-leading cause of death from cancer in males. Progress in the understanding of molecular and genetic mechanisms leading to this disease has only recently begun to offer a glimpse of the genes, chromosomal sites, and proteins implicated in the development and progression of prostate tumors. This brief review addresses some of the key issues in prostate cancer research, including a discussion of both hereditary and sporadic cancers as well as specific genes and chromosomal loci that likely play a part in the etiology of this disease.

A novel founder mutation in the RNASEL gene, 471delAAAG, is associated with prostate cancer in Ashkenazi Jews

HPC1/RNASEL was recently identified as a candidate gene for hereditary prostate cancer. We identified a novel founder frameshift mutation in RNASEL, 471delAAAG, in Ashkenazi Jews. The mutation frequency in the Ashkenazi population, estimated on the basis of the frequency in 150 healthy young women, was 4% (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.9%-8.4%). Among Ashkenazi Jews, the mutation frequency was higher in patients with prostate cancer (PRCA) than in elderly male control individuals (6.9% vs. 2.4%; odds ratio = 3.0; 95% CI 0.6-15.3; P=.17). 471delAAAG was not detected in the 134 non-Ashkenazi patients with PRCA and control individuals tested. The median age at PRCA diagnosis did not differ significantly between the Ashkenazi carriers and noncarriers included in our study. However, carriers received diagnoses at a significantly earlier age, compared with patients with PRCA who were registered in the Israeli National Cancer Registry (65 vs. 74.4 years, respectively; P<.001). When we examined two brothers with PRCA, we found a heterozygous 471delAAAG mutation in one and a homozygous mutation in the other. Loss of heterozygosity was demonstrated in the tumor of the heterozygous sib. Taken together, these data suggest that the 471delAAAG null mutation is associated with PRCA in Ashkenazi men. However, additional studies are required to determine whether this mutation confers increased risk for PRCA in this population.

Hereditary prostate cancer: clinical aspects

PURPOSE

We review the current epidemiological and genetic knowledge regarding hereditary prostate cancer, and outline its clinical implications.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Published articles on hereditary prostate cancer were identified using the MEDLINE data base.

RESULTS

A risk of prostate cancer, particularly early onset disease, is strongly affected by family history (number of relatives with prostate cancer and their age at diagnosis). A family history of prostate cancer increases the positive predictive value of prostate specific antigen testing and, hence, heredity should always be assessed when deciding whether to perform biopsies in a man with a prostate specific antigen level of 3 to 10 ng./ml. Epidemiological studies indicate that dominantly inherited susceptibility genes with high penetrance cause 5% to 10% of all prostate cancer cases, and as much as 30% to 40% of early onset disease. More than a half dozen chromosome loci that may comprise such genes have been mapped, but as of May 2002 no prostate cancer susceptibility gene of major importance had been cloned. Most likely, environmental factors and comparatively common variants of several other genes affect prostate cancer risk in families with or without multiple cases of the disease. On average, hereditary prostate cancer is diagnosed 6 to 7 years earlier than sporadic prostate cancer, but does not otherwise differ clinically from the sporadic form. As a consequence of the earlier onset, a greater proportion of men with hereditary prostate cancer die of the disease than those with nonhereditary prostate cancer. At present, the only clinically applicable measure to reduce prostate cancer mortality in families with hereditary disease is screening, with the aim of diagnosing the disease when it is still in a curable stage.

CONCLUSIONS

Hereditary susceptibility is now considered the strongest risk factor for prostate cancer and has profound clinical importance. The genetic mechanism behind such susceptibility has turned out to be more complex than initially thought, and will probably not be completely understood for many years to come.

Analysis of the RNASEL gene in familial and sporadic prostate cancer

The RNASEL gene on chromosome 1q25 was recently identified as a candidate gene for hereditary prostate cancer (PC). To confirm these findings, we screened 326 patients from 163 families with familial PC for potential germline mutations, by use of conformation-sensitive gel electrophoresis, followed by direct sequence analysis. A total of six variants were identified, including one intronic and five exonic changes (three missense and two silent alterations). There were no unequivocal pathogenic changes. To further test for potential associations between genes and increased risk for disease, the three missense polymorphisms (Ile97Leu, Arg462Gln, and Glu541Asp) were genotyped in 438 patients with familial PC and in 510 population-based control subjects. Association testing revealed no significant differences between patients and control subjects for either the Leu97 variant (chi(2) trend test = 1.42; P=.23) or the Asp541 variant (chi2=1.52; P=.22). However, significant differences were detected for the Arg462Gln genotypes (chi2=5.20; P=.02; odds ratio [OR] = 0.54; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.32-0.91) when the genotype Gln/Gln was compared with Arg/Arg. In subset analyses, associations were also observed in the younger group (age at diagnosis </=64 years) (P=.0008; OR=0.29; 95% CI = 0.13-0.66), in node-negative patients (P=.01; OR=0.48; 95% CI 0.27-0.84), patients with stage T(1)/T(2) disease (P=.008; OR=0.39; 95% CI 0.2-0.75), and patients with low-grade disease (P=.01; OR=0.40; 95% CI 0.20-0.78). To evaluate whether this variant was also associated with sporadic PC, we genotyped an additional 499 patients with sporadic PC. Differences in frequency were not detected between patients with sporadic disease and control subjects. However, the same association was observed between patients with familial disease and patients with sporadic disease for the entire group (chi2=4.82; P=.03), as well as in the subset analyses. These results suggest that polymorphic changes within the RNASEL gene may be associated with increased risk of familial but not sporadic PC.

Perspective: prostate cancer susceptibility genes

In many developed countries, prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy in men. The extent to which the marked racial/ethnic difference in its incidence rate is attributable to screening methods, environmental, hormonal, and/or genetic factors remains unknown. A positive family history is among the strongest epidemiological risk factors for prostate cancer. It is now well recognized that association of candidate genetic markers to this multifactorial malignancy is more difficult than the identification of susceptibility genes for some common cancers such as breast, ovary, and colon cancer. Several reasons may explain such a difficulty: 1) prostate cancer is diagnosed at a late age, thus often making it impossible to obtain DNA samples from living affected men for more than one generation; 2) the presence within high-risk pedigrees of phenocopies, associated with the lack of distinguishing features between hereditary and sporadic forms; and 3) the genetic heterogeneity of this complex disease along with the accompanying difficulty of developing appropriate statistical transmission models taking into account simultaneously multiple susceptibility genes, frequently showing moderate or low penetrance. Despite the localization of seven susceptibility loci, there has been limited confirmatory evidence of linkage for currently known candidate genes. Nonetheless, the discovery of the first prostate cancer susceptibility gene characterized by positional cloning, ELAC2 was achieved taking advantage of the Utah Family Resource. Moreover, common missense mutations in the ELAC2 gene were found to be significantly associated with an increased risk of diagnosis of prostate cancer in some studies. More recently, recombination map-ping and candidate gene analysis were used to map several genes, including the 2'-5'-oligoadenylate-dependent ribonuclease L (RNASEL) gene, to the critical region of HPC1. Two deleterious mutations in RNASEL segregate independently with the disease in two of the eight HPC1-linked families. Additional studies using larger cohorts are needed to fully evaluate the role of these two susceptibility genes in prostate cancer risk. Although a number of rare highly penetrant loci contribute to the Mendelian inheritance of prostate cancer, some of the familial risks may be due to shared environment and more specifically to common low-penetrance genetic variants. In this regard, it is not surprising that analyses of genes encoding key proteins involved in androgen biosynthesis and action, led to the observation of a significant association between a susceptibility to prostate cancer and common genetic variants, such as those found in 5alpha-reductase type 2 and AR genes.

Germline alterations of the RNASEL gene, a candidate HPC1 gene at 1q25, in patients and families with prostate cancer

The RNASEL gene (2',5'-oligoisoadenylate-synthetase dependent) encodes a ribonuclease that mediates the antiviral and apoptotic activities of interferons. The RNASEL gene maps to the hereditary-prostate-cancer (HPC)-predisposition locus at 1q24-q25 (HPC1) and was recently shown to harbor truncating mutations in two families with linkage to HPC1. Here, we screened for RNASEL germline mutations in 66 Finnish patients with HPC, and we determined the frequency of the changes in the index patients from 116 families with HPC, in 492 patients with unselected prostate cancer (PRCA), in 223 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and in 566 controls. A truncating mutation, E265X, was found in 5 (4.3%) of the 116 patients from families with HPC. This was significantly higher (odds ratio [OR] =4.56; P=.04) than the frequency of E265X in controls (1.8%). The highest mutation frequency (9.5%) was found in patients from families with four or more affected members. Possible segregation was detected only in a single family. However, the median age at disease onset for E265X carriers was 11 years less than that for noncarriers in the same families. In addition, of the four missense variants found, R462Q showed an association with HPC (OR=1.96; P=.07). None of the variants showed any differences between controls and either patients with BPH or patients with PRCA. We conclude that, although RNASEL mutations do not explain disease segregation in Finnish families with HPC, the variants are enriched in families with HPC that include more than two affected members and may also be associated with the age at disease onset. This suggests a possible modifying role in cancer predisposition. The impact that the RNASEL sequence variants have on PRCA burden at the population level seems small but deserves further study.