DIFFERENTIAL EXPRESSION OF TRANSFORMING GROWTH-FACTOR-BETA-1 AND BETA-3 AS WELL AS C-FOS MESSENGER-RNA IN NORMAL HUMAN PROSTATE, BENIGN PROSTATIC HYPERPLASIA AND PROSTATIC-CANCER

The discrepancy between the incidence of latent prostate cancer and th at of clinically overt carcinoma suggests that there can be different courses in the biological progression of prostate cancer. As this canc er is detected increasingly at an infraclinical stage, markers are nee ded to indicate which lesions will progress and lead to the patient's death. To investigate the possibility that specific growth factors and /or proto-oncogenes are expressed differentially, we measured mRNA lev els of transforming growth factors beta1 (TGF-beta1), TGF-beta2 and TG F-beta3 and of the c-fos and c-jun oncogenes by Northern blotting in n ormal prostate, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and prostate cancer . Our data demonstrate that expression of TGF-beta1 increased, whereas that of TGF-beta3 fell to an almost undetectable level in carcinoma. Expression of c-fos followed the TGF-beta1 pattern, whereas no differe nce could be seen in c-jun expression in cancer as compared with BPH a nd normal prostate. The differential expression of TGF-beta1, TGF-beta 3 and c-fos could possibly be used to improve the characterisation of prostate cancer. Long-term follow-up of patients may indicate whether mRNA levels of these growth factors and oncogenes correlate clinically and whether they can be used as markers for progression in human pros tate cancer.