Taken together, these findings suggest that OLFM4 plays an important tumor-suppressor role in prostate cancer progression and might be useful as a novel candidate biomarker for prostate cancer.
Application of this assay on prospective patient samples uncovered OLFM4 as a novel RET fusion partner in a small-bowel cancer and led to the discovery of a KLK2-FGFR2 fusion in a patient with prostate cancer who subsequently underwent treatment with a pan-fibroblast growth factor receptor inhibitor.
Thus, olfactomedin 4 appears to play a critical role in regulating progression of prostate cancer, and has potential as a new biomarker for prostate cancer.
By using immunohistochemical analysis of 162 prostate cancer tissue array samples representing a range of Gleason scores, we found that OLFM4 protein expression correlated inversely with advanced prostate cancer, consistent with the genetic results.