Premium
Epithelial–mesenchymal transition in prostate cancer is associated with quantifiable changes in nuclear structure
Author(s) -
Verdone James E.,
Parsana Princy,
Veltri Robert W.,
Pienta Kenneth J.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the prostate
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.295
H-Index - 123
eISSN - 1097-0045
pISSN - 0270-4137
DOI - 10.1002/pros.22908
Subject(s) - prostate cancer , epithelial–mesenchymal transition , cancer , prostate , pathology , cancer cell , mesenchymal stem cell , cancer research , biology , medicine , oncology , metastasis
BACKGROUND Prostate cancer progression is concomitant with quantifiable nuclear structure and texture changes as compared to non‐cancer tissue. Malignant progression is associated with an epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) program whereby epithelial cancer cells take on a mesenchymal phenotype and dissociate from a tumor mass, invade, and disseminate to distant metastatic sites. The objective of this study was to determine if epithelial and mesenchymal prostate cancer cells have different nuclear morphology. METHODS Murine tibia injections of epithelial PC3 (PC3‐Epi) and mesenchymal PC3 (PC3‐EMT) prostate cancer cells were processed and stained with H&E. Cancer cell nuclear image data was obtained using commercially available image‐processing software. Univariate and multivariate statistical analysis were used to compare the two phenotypes. Several non‐parametric classifiers were constructed and permutation‐tested at various training set fractions to ensure robustness of classification between PC3‐Epi and PC3‐EMT cells in vivo. RESULTS PC3‐Epi and PC3‐EMT prostate cancer cells were separable at the single cell level in murine tibia injections on the basis of nuclear structure and texture remodeling associated with an EMT. Support vector machine and multinomial logistic regression models based on nuclear architecture features yielded AUC–ROC curves of 0.95 and 0.96, respectively, in separating PC3‐Epi and PC3‐EMT prostate cancer cells in vivo. CONCLUSIONS Prostate cancer cells that have undergone an EMT demonstrated an altered nuclear structure. The association of nuclear changes and a mesenchymal phenotype demonstrates quantitative morphometric image analysis may be used to detect cancer cells that have undergone EMT. This morphometric measurement could provide valuable prognostic information in patients regarding the likelihood of [future] metastatic disease. Prostate 75:218–224, 2015 . © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.