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Two Unique Novel Prostate-Specific and Androgen-Regulated Fusion Partners of ETV4 in Prostate Cancer

Departments of ¹ Pathology and ² Urology, Josephine Nefkens Institute, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Requests for reprints: Jan Trapman, Department of Pathology, Josephine Nefkens Institute, Erasmus University Medical Center, PO Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Phone: 31-107043933; Fax: 31-107044762; E-mail: j.trapman{at}erasmusmc.nl.

Key Words: prostate cancer • ETV4 • TMPRSS2 • KLK2 • CANT1 • gene fusion • prostate-specific • androgen-regulated

Recently, fusion of ERG to the androgen-regulated, prostate-specific TMPRSS2 gene has been identified as the most frequent genetic alteration in prostate cancer. At low frequency, TMPRSS2-ETV1 and TMPRSS2-ETV4 fusion genes have been described. In this study, we report two novel ETV4 fusion genes in prostate cancer: KLK2-ETV4 and CANT1-ETV4. Both gene fusions have important unique aspects. KLK2 is a well-established androgen-induced and prostate-specific gene. Fusion of KLK2 to ETV4 results in the generation of an additional ETV4 exon, denoted exon 4a. This novel exon delivers an ATG for the longest open reading frame, in this way avoiding translation start in KLK2 exon 1. Although wild-type CANT1 has two alternative first exons (exons 1 and 1a), only exon 1a was detected in CANT1-ETV4 fusion transcripts. We show that CANT1 transcripts starting at exon 1a have an androgen-induced and prostate-specific expression pattern, whereas CANT1 transcripts starting at exon 1 are not prostate specific. So, the two novel ETV4 fusion partners possess as predominant common characteristics androgen-induction and prostate-specific expression. [Cancer Res 2008;68(9):3094–8]

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