Repetition of CAG Polymorphism in the Androgen Receptor as a Prognostic Marker in Prostate Cancer: Results from a Cohort of Argentinean Patients

GASTON PASCUAL; AGUSTINA SABATER; JUAN BIZZOTTO; ROCIO SENIUK; PABLO SANCHIS; AYELEN TORO; GERALDINE GUERON; JAVIER COTIGNOLA

San Diego

Congreso; American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting.; 2024

The androgen receptor (AR) is a transcription factor that plays a key role in the development of prostate cancer (PCa). The activity of AR as a transcriptional co-activator is associated with the number of glutamines in the N-terminal, which depends on the number of tandem repetitions of CAG nucleotides. Currently, serum levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and histopathological characteristics (The International Society of Urological Pathology or ISUP grade and the marginal improvement) are used as screening and prognostic biomarkers, respectively. However, due to the heterogeneity of these tumors, the search for markers that complement these determinations is of great importance to improve the clinical management of patients.The aim of this work is to characterize a cohort of Argentinean PCa patients based on a polymorphism (CAG repetition) in AR and associate the genotypes with clinical-pathological characteristics to improve the prognosis of the disease.For this purpose, 112 Argentinean patients diagnosed with prostate cancer at Hospital de Clínicas (Buenos Aires, Argentina) were recruited. These patients underwent radical prostatectomy as a treatment. Blood samples were collected. Genomic DNA was extracted by CTAB method, and the number of CAG tandem repetitions for AR was genotyped using PCR followed by capillary electrophoresis. Correlations between genotypes and clinical-pathological variables were performed using the R Studio program.Patients were classified into three subgroups based on the length of the CAG tandem repeat in AR: long (>23 repeats, n=29), medium (20-23 repeats, n=44) and short (