The probability of involvement of human papillomavirus in the carcinogenesis of bladder small cell carcinoma, prostatic ductal adenocarcinoma, and penile squamous cell carcinoma: a case report

Case Report of Synchronous Prostate, Hepatocellular, and Rectal Carcinomas and Review of the Literature

Synchronous occurrence of three histopathologically distinct malignant tumors is a rare event, and there are no definitive guidelines about the optimal treatment of these patients. We report a case of synchronous prostate, hepatocellular, and rectal carcinomas and discuss our therapeutic strategy that resulted in excellent clinical results.

Retracted: Identification of Prognosis Biomarkers of Prostatic Cancer in a Cohort of 498 Patients from TCGA

The article entitled, "Identification of prognosis biomarkers of prostatic cancer in a cohort of 498 patients from TCGA," by Chen Z and Hu H. (J Comput Biol Dec 2019: e-pub ahead of print; DOI: 10.1089/cmb.2019.0224) is being officially retracted at the authors' request due to errors found in the data after publication of the article. The detected errors render the results and conclusion irreproducible, and therefore, invalid. Based on the communications received from the authors, the editorial leadership of Journal of Computational Biology agreed to retract the published paper. However, after retracting the article, it was also discovered that the same article had been previously published in volume 43, issue 6 of the journal, Current Problems in Cancer, published by Elsevier. The publisher of Journal of Computational Biology was in communication with Elseivier since simultaneous submission and/or publication is a violation of the proper protocols of peer review, and they are conducting their own evaluation. Journal of Computational Biology also notified the authors' institution of the infraction. Journal of Computational Biology, its Editor, and its Publisher are committed to preserving the integrity of the scientific record for the community it serves.

Identification of prognosis biomarkers of prostatic cancer in a cohort of 498 patients from TCGA

OBJECTIVE

Prostatic cancer (PCa) is the first common cancer in male, and the prognostic variables are beneficial for clinical trial design and treatment strategies for PCa. This study was performed to identify more potential biomarkers for the prognosis of patients with PCa.

METHODS AND RESULTS

The transcriptome data and survival information of a cohort including 498 subjects with PCa were downloaded from TCGA. A total of 4293 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including 1362 prognosis-related DEGs, were identified in PCa tissues compared with normal tissues. Upregulated genes, including serine/arginine-rich splicing factors (SRSFs; such as SRSF2, SRSF5, SRSF7 and SRSF8), and ubiquitin conjugating enzyme E2 (UBE2) members (such as UBE2D2, UBE2G2, UBE2J1 and UBE2E1), were identified as negative prognostic biomarkers of PCa, as the high expression of them correlated with poor overall survival of PCa patients. Several downregulated Golgi-ER traffic mediators (such as SEC31A, TMED2, and TMED10) were identified as positive prognostic biomarkers of PCa, as the high expression of them correlated with good overall survival of PCa patients.

CONCLUSIONS

These genes were of great interests in prognosis of PCa, and some of them may be constructive for the augmentation of clinical trial design and treatment strategies for PCa.

The role of Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus infection in the proliferation of human bladder cancer cells

Existing evidence suggests a possible role of viruses in human bladder cancer development. Recently, Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) was reported to be the most frequently detected virus in bladder cancer tissue from Croatian patients on screening with the Lawrence Livermore Microbial Detection Array. In the current study, to investigate the functional roles of KSHV in bladder cancer, five bladder cancer cell lines were infected with KSHV and their tumour progression-associated changes investigated. Four KSHV-infected bladder cancer cell lines were established; two invasive bladder cancer cell lines showed higher proliferation rates than uninfected cells. Additionally, these KSHV-infected invasive bladder cancer cells showed a greater number of colonies, which were also significantly larger than those of uninfected cells, in a soft agar colony formation assay. cDNA microarray analysis showed that various genes associated with cell proliferation and cancer development were upregulated in these KSHV-infected bladder cancer cells. Taken together, we suggest that KSHV infection affects the proliferation of a subset of invasive bladder cancer cells and may therefore play a role in their oncogenic progression. Further studies are required to elucidate the exact mechanism used by KSHV to promote bladder cancer progression.