Abstract C041: Transcriptomic analysis of prostate cancer patients living with HIV

Abstract

Abstract Background: Higher incidence and mortality rates of liver, lung, anal, and head and neck cancers are typically seen in patients living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). However, some previous studies have a decreased risk of prostate cancer in HIV+ patients, particularly in men from sexual minorities, with no clear biological or epidemiological explanation. Methods: To identify the specific transcriptomic changes and genetic pathways associated with HIV infection and prostate cancer emergence, we performed bulk RNA-Seq analysis on 18 prostate cancer samples (9 HIV+ and 9 HIV-). We first used kallisto to measure gene-level expression. We then performed principal component analysis (PCA) to determine if HIV status clearly clustered patients based on their gene expression levels. We subsequently used DESeq2 to perform differentially expressed transcriptomic analysis to identify genes that are associated with HIV and prostate cancer phenotypes. Samples were clustered based on expression levels of the top differentially expressed genes across the HIV+ and HIV- phenotypes. Gene set enrichment analysis was performed on the gene signatures from the two phenotypes. Using an existing single cell RNA-Seq prostate cancer dataset, we deconvoluted the 18 samples with CIBERSORT to approximate the cell type composition. Results: PCA highlighted no major separation between samples based on HIV status. We identified 450 significantly upregulated genes in HIV+ patients, including YAP1, MAT2A, KLF4, and ERF. We identified 409 upregulated genes in HIV- patients, including MICA, AQP2, and KRT6C. Upregulated genes found in HIV+ patients were significantly enriched in multiple immune response pathways, which is consistent with previous sequencing studies focused on HIV status. After cell type composition estimation, we found the samples to be similar in their cell type distributions - stromal and tumor cells were the largest populations, while immune cells were not well represented. Conclusions: We identified transcriptomic differences that need future studies that directly interrogate the biological pathways that affect the incidence of prostate cancer in patients living with HIV. Citation Format: Hanbing Song, Michelle Li, Jon Akutagawa, Franklin Huang. Transcriptomic analysis of prostate cancer patients living with HIV [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 16th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2023 Sep 29-Oct 2;Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2023;32(12 Suppl):Abstract nr C041.