Prostate cancer is a frequently diagnosed malignancy, estimated 1.3 million newly diagnosed cases worldwide annually. It has surpassed breast cancer and become the most prevalent, increasingly crucial medical issue in males. Among 10 million clinically diagnosed PCa men, approximately 0.7 million are living with metastatic PCa, and more than 0.4 million deaths occur annually. This mortality rate is expected to double by 2040 [1]. Despite improvements in metastatic PCa treatment managing this disease remains challenging [2]. Prostate cancer cells are increasingly resistant to various treatments, which can affect the course of the disease and survival [3]. The mortality rate will be high if the development of resistance continues to outpace the development of new treatment options. Physicians can evaluate the chance of PCa recovery using different types of statistics called survival statistics [4]. According to the survival rate statistic, only a percentage of patients survive cancer [5, 6]. Since 2014, incidence rates for prostate cancer in its advanced stages have increased by 5% annually. Overall incidence rates have increased by 3% annually [7, 8, 9]. The above finding is not surprising due to the limited resources for prostate cancer screening and detection [10, 11, 12].
Almost 98% of PCa cases originated from the organ's glandular part, and their microscopic examination is based on certain glandular patterns. The Gleason score is a commonly used assessment technique to grade prostate adenocarcinoma and has remarkable prognostic value [13]. Most malignancies arise in the peripheral glandular zone, which results in asymptomatic prostatic cancer at earlier stages, whereas symptomatic presentation occurs at the metastatic state of the disease [14]. Despite advanced ages, suggestive evidence provided by family history data reported that the critical risk factors for PCa are genetic factors that may lead to the progression of abnormal prostatic cell growth and are responsible for developing cancerous cells [15]. The initial emergence of PCa in the majority of men population is due to hereditary factors, having a family member’s history, and the chance of its occurrence in first-rank relatives is increased by two to three-fold [16]. However, the findings of segregation analysis of multi-case families supported an autosomal dominant inheritance mode, but it is estimated that this inherited form causes only 9% of all PCa. A multigenic etiology has also been proposed for the majority of PCa cases. In intraepithelial neoplasia lesions, the multilayered luminal epithelium is observed, which serves as a promising biomarker of adenocarcinoma, such as loss of cytokeratin-5 & cytokeratin-14 (basal markers), the gain of cytokeratin-8 & cytokeratin-18 (luminal markers), and altered expression of α-methyl acyl-CoA racemase [17].
In current clinical practice, inadequate diagnostic investigations are involved in screening PCa patients that are usually based on blood prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels and the tumor stage. The classification of tumor stages is based on the blood PSA level, progression of PCa, and Gleason score of tumor grading. Though PSA is a commonly used diagnostic and prognostic marker of PCa, but numerous studies highlighted their poor correlation with survival outcomes [18]. For early prediction and prognosis of PCa, recent studies published evidence focused on the clinical importance of a genetic feature called Single Nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is the substitution, insertion, or deletion of a single nucleotide at a specific genomic position. It is the most prevalent type of genetic variation in people. A single base pair difference in the DNA sequence at a specific location in the genome causes the difference. SNPs may affect several aspects of an individual's biology, including disease susceptibility, drug response, and phenotypic traits [19]. Many SNPs in the human genome appear roughly every 300 nucleotides [20]. Specific SNPs also impact susceptibility to disease and treatment response. For instance, a specific SNP may increase an individual's risk of developing a specific disease or alter the response to a specific drug. These SNPs associated with certain traits or diseases are identified through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) [21]. Researchers identified phenotypic-related genetic markers by comparing SNP profiles of patients with healthy controls. The function of genes relating to particular pathways is altered by genetic variations that may have significant implications in clinical practice for personalized medicine [22].
These studies have evaluated the coding sequences and assessed long noncoding RNAs (LncRNAs) having more than 200 nucleotides. Although LncRNAa does not translate, they interact with DNA, RNA, and proteins to perform their regulatory effects for differentiating, migrating, and proliferating cells and inducing apoptosis [23]. A polymorphism in the promoter region of LncRNA also modulates the expression pattern. Recently, a GAS5 gene encodes tumor suppressor LncRNA (Growth arrest-specific 5) reported to be involved in developing many cancers, such as lung, prostate, colorectal, and breast [24]. GAS5 is considered to cause the invasion, proliferation, migration, and metastasis of PCa cells, but its exact expression level is still controversial [25]. Numerous studies highlighted that the various genetic polymorphisms are linked with the risk level, grading, and mortality of PCa. In the promoter region of GAS5, a 5-bp indel polymorphism is reported as variant rs145204276, shown as “-/AGGCA”, alters the gene expression pattern, which results in increased susceptibility to cancers. This SNP also significantly affects prognosis, disease stage, and the Gleason score of PCa [26].
An oncogenic transcription factor (TMPRSS2 and ERG fusion) is the most frequently reported chromosomal aberration in PCa, which causes carcinogenesis in > 50% of patients. In the prostate tumor-permissive inflammatory microenvironment, epithelial transformation is followed by a phenotypic and genotypic series of changes [27]. Up till now, about 5000 somatic mutations have been detected in prostate growth, and among these, the highly reported mutated genes are MED12, SCN11A, CDKN1B, SPOP, PIK3CA, PTEN, THSD7B, C14orf49, NIPA2, TP53, FOXA1, and ZNF595. Almost 15–25% risk of PCa is found in individuals having mutations in the BRCA gene, and life-threatening prostate cancer is reported to be linked with the mutations in BRCA1, BRCA2, and HOXB13 [28].
Recent molecular genetic studies on the pathogenesis of the tumor, including the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes and activation of oncogenes, have explained the multiple genetic alterations. The loss of heterozygosity causes chromosomal instability that inactivates the tumor suppressor genes, which can serve as an indicator to identify these genes containing chromosomal regions for selective growth and are found as the primary source of tumorigenesis [29]. The high-frequency loss of heterozygosity is a form of allelic loss observed in tumor suppressor genes located on chromosomes 16q and 10q and are involved in the pathogenesis of human PCa [30]. As an alternative to curative PCa therapy, active surveillance (measuring cancer progression) is a strategy for monitoring old-age patients when their low life expectancy is anticipated. However, there is a very high chance of PCa diagnosis at an older age. A reduction of 46% in mortality risk has been observed in older men treated with local therapy compared to patients treated conservatively [31]. This review presents an overview of the influence of the SNPs reported in different genes on the pharmacotherapy for PCa and assesses present genetic biomarkers with a focus on early diagnosis and personalized therapeutic approach in PCa.