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Aim. To assess the relative expression (RE) levels of various isoforms of the PDCD1 and PDL1 immune checkpoint genes in prostate tumors, to find the clinically significant alterations in tumors and the correlations with the prostate cancer related and other immune associated genes. Methods. Using quantitative PCR, RE levels of different isoforms of PDCD1 and PDL1 were analyzed in 35 samples of prostate cancer tissues of a different Gleason score (GS) and at various grades, the paired conventionally normal prostate tissue (CNT) samples and 20 prostate adenomas. Results. We have assessed RE levels for 5 variants of long and short isoforms of PDCD1 and PDL1 in prostate cancer and noncancerous tissue samples. We detected a significant decrease of RE levels of PDL1 long isoforms in prostate cancer with GS>7, compared with the adenoma group. Noteworthy, RE of short isoforms of PDCD1 and PDL1 has positive correlations with the age. The RE patterns of PDCD1 and PDL1 isoforms demonstrated significant correlations with the expression of 31 genes, related to tumor-associated macrophages, fibroblasts and immune cell markers in the prostate cancer group. Conclusions. The studied genes are involved in the prostate cancer progression, related to inflammation. The RE levels showed high dispersion in all groups of prostate tissue samples. We propose to assess the RE levels of the PDCD1 and PDL1 genes long isoforms, before prescribing immunotherapy methods, to analyse the putative sensitivity of tumors to such treatment. Further studies are needed to confirm the presented here results on a larger patient cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. To assess the rate of promoter methylation of putative TSGs for PCa in tumor tissue and in urine of PCa patients for better understanding of regulation of gene expression upon the PCa development and to evaluate the possibility to use the data on TSGs' methylation for the development of noninvasive PCa markers. Methods. A quantitative methyl-specific PCR (qMSP) was used for the analysis of a methylation rate in prostate tissues and cell lines, and an ordinary MSP was performed for the study of urine samples. Results. We found that the RASSF1A promoter demonstrated a higher methylation rate in the TMPRSS2:ERG fusion positive PCa. The methylation of NKX3.1, PTEN and RASSF1A in DNA from urine was more common for cancer patients than for healthy donors. The promoters of CDH1 and GDF15 were methylated more frequently in PCa patients, than in patients with inflammatory disease. Conclusions. The abovementioned five genes can form a panel for early non-invasive detection of PCa. This set can be combined with the detection of the TMPRSS2:ERG fusion transcript. More work should be done to understand the molecular mechanisms explaining the functional role of promoter methylation of the selected genes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]