Bergstrahl, Eric J.

5017 Background: The majority of men with prostate cancer are diagnosed with cancers with low mortality. Such men are treated with radical prostatectomy, external beam radiotherapy, or brachytherapy and followed by serum PSA evaluations. Some men with a rising PSA therapy will have local recurrence or metastasis, but many will have no other evidence of recurrent disease other than a rising PSA. The PSA doubling time has been used to determine which of these men deserve adjuvant hormonal ablation, radiation therapy, or observation. We hypothesize that additional biomarkers will predict which men with a rising PSA post-definitive therapy would benefit from additional therapy. Methods: We designed a custom array containing 526 RNA targets whose expression has been reported to be altered in association with prostate cancer progression. We included targets from Mayo Clinic prostate cancer research. Together with a second commercial array, 530 genes implicated in prostate cancer progression and 420 other cancer-related genes were evaluated. A case-control design was used to test the association of the expression results with outcome. Cases were men post-radical prostatectomy who developed systemic progression within 5 years after PSA recurrence (N=213). Controls were matched men post-radical prostatectomy with PSA recurrence but no evidence of clinical progression within 5 years (N=213). Results: Of 426 eligible patients, paraffin blocks were available on 418 (98.1%). RNA was prepared from all 418 blocks, and both arrays were both successful on 405 (96.9%) RNAs. Upon univariate analysis, 40 genes were highly significantly over- or under-expressed in the cases versus controls (1x10-22 < p < 1x10-7). Recursive partitioning (RP) selected 4 genes (TPX2, FAM13C1, TOPO2A and TSP2) that distinguished cases from controls. Random Forest analysis selected 24 genes (including 3 of the RP 4). A multivariable ROC analysis using these 24 genes generated an AUC of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.75–0.84). Conclusions: A specific gene expression pattern was significantly associated with systemic progression after PSA recurrence. The measurement of gene expression pattern may be useful for determining which men may benefit from additional therapy after PSA recurrence. No significant financial relationships to disclose.

Abstract Introduction: Multivariable models that predict biochemical recurrence (BCR) can indicate patients at higher risk for developing clinical progression after prostatectomy. However, most patients that experience BCR do not metastasize or die from prostate cancer, making BCR an unreliable surrogate endpoint. In this study we compared the clinical and genomic characteristics of prostatectomy patients in order to better delineate the relationship between BCR and aggressive prostate cancer. Methods: Postoperative patients were retrospectively classified into three outcome groups: NED (no evidence of disease recurrence); BCR-only (patients that experienced BCR but didn't have progressive disease as evidenced by bone or CT scans); and CP (clinical progression with BCR plus positive CT or bone scans). Patient specimens were from the Mayo Clinic Radical Prostatectomy Registry, selected using a nested case-control design with 14 years median follow-up. RNA expression levels from FFPE tumor specimens were measured with 1.4 million feature whole-transcriptome oligonucleotide microarrays on 106 matching patients from each outcome group (total 318 patients). We analyzed the clinical covariates of the outcome groups in a pairwise manner (NED vs. BCR-only; NED vs. CP; CP vs. BCR-only), using a conditional logistic model in univariable and multivariable analyses. We performed feature reduction for the genomic data set using Kruskal-Wallis tests and regularized logistic regression. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to quantify the variance of the genomic data with respect to the patient outcome groups. Results: Our initial hypothesis was that all three outcome groups would have different clinical and genomic characteristics. Univariable analysis of clinical variables failed to show statistically significant differences between NED and BCR-only groups. Multivariable analysis of the clinical variables also failed to show statistically significant differences between NED and BCR-only groups. Among the clinical variables only pathological Gleason score was statistically significant when comparing the BCR-only vs. CP and NED vs. CP groups. Genomic analysis found 363 coding and non-coding features that passed thresholds for differential expression between the three outcome groups. PCA established that the primary source of variance in the genomic data stemmed from the separation of CP from NED and BCR-only patients; whereas only a small amount of variance separates NED and BCR-only groups. The 363 features were further compared in the three outcome groups using Wilcoxon tests, adjusting for false-discovery using Benjamini-Hochberg. At a cutoff of p &lt; 0.001 there were no features differentially expressed between NED and BCR-only, while 52 and 34 statistically significant features were found in the NED vs. CP and CP vs. BCR-only comparisons, respectively. Conclusion: Considering the clinical and genomic results together, we find that: 1) Patients that developed clinical progression were significantly different from those that did not, irrespective of whether they experienced BCR or not; 2) the NED and BCR-only groups were statistically very similar to each other. We therefore conclude that BCR may not be the most appropriate endpoint for predictive models that attempt to stratify patients at risk for progression. This abstract is also presented as Poster B44. Citation Format: Anamaria Crisan, Elai Davicion, R. Jeffery Karnes, Robert B. Jenkins, Mercedeh H. Ghadessi, Christine Buerki, Eric J. Bergstrahl, Nicholas Erho, Ismael A. Vergara, Karla V. Ballman, Peter C. Black, Timothy J. Triche. Biochemical recurrence is not a definitive surrogate endpoint for development of clinically useful predictive models for post-prostatectomy patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Prostate Cancer Research; 2012 Feb 6-9; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PR4.

Study ObjectiveTo identify specific risk factors for excessive anticoagulation, defined as an international normalized ratio (INR) higher than 5, in hospitalized adults receiving warfarin therapy using a pharmacist‐managed dosing protocol.DesignRetrospective nested case‐control study.SettingLarge academic tertiary care medical center.PatientsHospitalized nonsurgical patients 18 years or older who received at least one dose of warfarin according to the pharmacist‐managed protocol from January 1, 2009, to January 31, 2012, were included. Patients who experienced an INR higher than 5 were designated as case patients; those who received warfarin for at least as many days as the case patients but who did not experience an INR more than 5 were deemed control patients. Controls were matched to cases in a 2:1 ratio by age, sex, INR goal, and type of warfarin therapy (new start or continuation).Measurements and Main ResultsA total of 87 case patients were matched to 174 controls. Ten different hypothesized risk factors were examined. Two variables, severity of illness score (odds ratio [OR] 4.89, p<0.001) and poor nutritional status (OR 4.27, p<0.001), demonstrated strong independent associations with risk of excessive anticoagulation. Administration of interacting drugs that highly potentiate warfarin's effect (OR 2.26, p=0.011) and concurrent diarrheal illness (OR 4.75, p<0.001) also displayed a statistically significant risk for excessive anticoagulation.ConclusionEven in a highly standardized system for warfarin dosing by a pharmacist‐managed protocol, higher disease severity and poor nutritional status placed hospitalized patients at greater risk of experiencing excessive anticoagulation. In addition, administration of interacting drugs that highly potentiate warfarin's effect or the occurrence of diarrheal illness may predict increased risk.