Growing genetic and molecular
biological evidence suggests that the disruption of balance between
Secreted Frizzled-Related Protein-1 (SFRP1) and β-
catenin plays an important role in the initiation and development of multiple
cancers. The aim of this study was to examine whether the expression of SFRP1 and β-
catenin is associated with the clinical-pathologic features of patients with
prostate cancer (PCa), and to evaluate their potential roles as predictive and prognostic
biomarkers. In this study, a total of 61 patients with PCa and 10 patients with
benign prostatic hyperplasia were included, and we showed that the expression of SFRP1 and β-
catenin was correlated with the Gleason score, survival rate and response for endocrine
therapy of PCa. The survival rates of PCa patients with low SFRP1 expression (P = 0.016) or high β-
catenin expression (P = 0.004) were significantly poorer. A negative correlation (r = -0.275, P = 0.032) between SFRP1 and β-
catenin was observed by Chi-square test. Multivariate analysis suggested that SFRP1 (hazard ratio, 0.429; 95% confidence intervals, 0.227-0.812; P = 0.009) may serve as an independent predictive and prognostic factor for PCa. We also showed that the
protein and
mRNA levels of SFRP1 in
androgen-dependent PCa cell line LNCaP were significantly higher than those in
androgen-independent PCa cell lines DU145 and PC3. However, the
protein level of β-
catenin in LNCaP cells was significantly lower than that in DU145 and PC3 cells, and no significant difference of β-
catenin mRNA level was observed in LNCaP, DU145 and PC3 cells.
Bisulfite sequencing PCR assay revealed significantly lower methylation level of SFRP1 promoter in LNCaP cells than that in DU145 and PC3 cells. Taken together, these findings suggest that SFRP1, which expression inversely correlates with that of β-
catenin, is a favorable predictive and prognostic
biomarker.