Abstract A38: RNA-seq analysis identified candidate pathogens for prostate cancer

Abstract

Abstract There is an abundance of evidence that chronic inflammation is linked to prostate cancer (PC), and pathogen infection is considered to be one of the possible causes for PC. Prostate infections by bacteria or viruses have been widely investigated. However, most of these studies have showed conflicting and controversial results. Most studies have focused on the PCR-based targeted detection of bacteria or viruses, and pathogen for PC remains to be found. To identify pathogen for PC, we investigated the transcriptomes of human prostate samples using whole-genome next-generation sequencing. The prostate specimens obtained by radical prostatectomy from 20 PC patients were sliced and divided into four sections. High-quality RNAs were extracted from the sections including PC. RNA-seq libraries were constructed according to the Illumina protocol and next-generation sequenced on a HiSeq 2000 instrument. To explore the potential of other pathogens being associated with PC, we performed de novo assembly of unmapped reads from the RNA-seq data from 20 PC samples. RNA-seq analysis identified four bacteria as candidate pathogens, which included Cutibacterium acnes, uncultured Chroococcidiopsis, Micrococcus luteus, and Moraxella osloensis. Among these candidate pathogens, Cutibacterium acnes was detected in 19 of 20 PC tissue samples by immunohistochemistry. We also performed PCR to detect other candidate pathogens (uncultured Chroococcidiopsis, Micrococcus luteus, and Moraxella osloensis) in PC samples for validation. Our findings provide further evidence of Cutibacterium acnes infections in human PCs as a promising pathogen for PC, and suggest that uncultured Chroococcidiopsis, Micrococcus luteus, and Moraxella osloensis could be novel candidate pathogens for PC. Further research is required and ongoing to clarify the molecular mechanisms underlying bacterial pathogenesis of PC. Citation Format: Shingo Ashida, Chiaki Kawada, Masanori Daibata, Keiji Inoue, Hidewaki Nakagawa. RNA-seq analysis identified candidate pathogens for prostate cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on the Microbiome, Viruses, and Cancer; 2020 Feb 21-24; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(8 Suppl):Abstract nr A38.