High expression of prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA) is associated with Gleason score in Iranian prostate cancer patients, a tissuemicroarray analysis

Introduction:Prostate Stem Cell antigen (PSCA) is one of the proteins expressed in prostate cancer whichhave been investigated as biomarkers for diagnosis and therapy of prostate cancer.Methods:Tissue microarrays of 185 paraffin embedded tissues of Iranian patients including 114prostate cancer (PCa), 21 High Grade Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia (HGPIN) and 50samples of benign prostate tissue were prepared. Immunohistochemical analysis of PSCAexpression by comparing the level of PSCA expression between benign tissues, HGPIN andPCa was performed and the correlations of PSCA expression with clinicopathologicparameters in PCa were assessed.Results:The PSCA expression was detected in membrane and cytoplasm of epithelial secretory cellsin normal prostate tissues, HGPIN and PCa with variety of intensities. The intensity of PSCAstaining was significantly increased in PCa group compared with HGPIN and benign prostatetissues (P-value <0.05). Moreover, the level of PSCA expression was increased with higherGleason score of PCa (P- value=0.036).Conclusions:Our data revealed that expression of PSCA as a cell surface marker increased from benignprostate tissues (BPH) and HGPIN to PCa, and its expression in PCa was positivelyassociated with poor cell differentiation, suggesting that PSCA could be considered as avaluable target for diagnosis and therapy of PCa.Despite the international variation inincidence and mortality rates of prostate cancer, our study in a series of Iranian PCa patientsexhibits the same characteristics of PSCA expression in prostate adenocarcinoma and benignprostate as previous immunohistochemical (IHC) studies in western population.