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Imaging, Diagnosis, Prognosis |
Authors' Affiliations: Departments of 1 Obstetrics and Gynecology/Division of Gynecologic Oncology, 2 Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, 3 Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences, 4 Center for Applied Genomics and Technology, Departments of 5 Medicine and Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, and 6 Department of Surgery, Duke University Medical Center, Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Durham, North Carolina
Requests for reprints: Andrew Berchuck, Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Duke University Medical Center, Box 3079, Durham, NC 27710. Phone: 919-684-3765; Fax: 919-684-8719; E-mail: berch001{at}mc.duke.edu.
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Abstract |
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Experimental Design: RNA from 65 serous ovarian cancers was analyzed using Affymetrix U133A microarrays. This included 54 stage III/IV cases (30 short-term survivors who lived <3 years and 24 long-term survivors who lived >7 years) and 11 stage I/II cases. Genes were screened on the basis of their level of and variability in expression, leaving 7,821 for use in developing a predictive model for survival. A composite predictive model was developed that combines Bayesian classification tree and multivariate discriminant models. Leave-one-out cross-validation was used to select and evaluate models.
Results: Patterns of genes were identified that distinguish short-term and long-term ovarian cancer survivors. The expression model developed for advanced stage disease classified all 11 early-stage ovarian cancers as long-term survivors. The MAL gene, which has been shown to confer resistance to cancer therapy, was most highly overexpressed in short-term survivors (3-fold compared with long-term survivors, and 29-fold compared with early-stage cases). These results suggest that gene expression patterns underlie differences in outcome, and an examination of the genes that provide this discrimination reveals that many are implicated in processes that define the malignant phenotype.
Conclusions: Differences in survival of advanced ovarian cancers are reflected by distinct patterns of gene expression. This biological distinction is further emphasized by the finding that early-stage cancers share expression patterns with the advanced stage long-term survivors, suggesting a shared favorable biology.
Key Words: ovarian cancer • serous • microarray • gene expression
Prior studies that have sought to elucidate the molecular determinants of outcome in serous ovarian cancers generally have focused on single genes. Alterations in several oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes have been described in serous ovarian cancers (5). Mutation of the TP53 tumor suppressor gene is the most common genetic alteration in ovarian cancers, occurring in at least 70% of advanced stage cases (6). Among patients with advanced stage disease, however, neither TP53 mutational status (6) nor other single gene alterations have proven strong predictors of outcome.
The development of microarray technology now permits analysis of expression levels of thousands of genes in a cancer. Our group and others have shown that expression microarrays can be used to identify unique characteristics of tumors that can predict clinical phenotypes and survival in breast cancer (7, 8). In the present study, we used Affymetrix U133A microarrays containing over 22,000 probe sets to define expression patterns that distinguish between short-term (<3 years) and long-term (>7 years) survival in advanced serous ovarian cancers. Bayesian linear discriminant and classification tree analyses yielded models that classified cases correctly when subjected to leave-one-out cross-validation. In addition, these models classified all early-stage ovarian cancers as having gene expression patterns similar to that of the cancers from long-term survivors with advanced stage disease suggesting a shared favorable biology.
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Materials and Methods |
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Microarray analysis
Frozen tissue samples were embedded in optimum cutting temperature medium and sections were cut and mounted on slides. The slides were stained with H&E to assure that at least 60% of the cellular content was comprised of cancer cells. Approximately 30 mg of tissue were added to a chilled BioPulverizer H tube (Bio101 Systems, Carlsbad, CA). Lysis buffer from the Qiagen Rneasy Mini kit was added and the tissue homogenized for 20 seconds in a Mini-Beadbeater (Biospec Products, Bartlesville, OK). Tubes were spun briefly to pellet the garnet mixture and reduce foam. The lysate was transferred to a new 1.5 mL tube using a syringe and a 21-gauge needle, followed by passage through the needle 10 times to shear genomic DNA. Total RNA was extracted using the Qiagen Rneasy Mini kit. Two extractions were done for each tumor and the total RNA pooled at the end of the Rneasy protocol, followed by a precipitation step to reduce volume. Quality of the RNA was checked by an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer. Labeled probes for Affymetrix DNA microarray analysis were prepared according to the instructions of the manufacturer. Biotin-labeled cRNA, produced by in vitro transcription, was fragmented and hybridized to the Affymetrix U133A GeneChip arrays (22,283 probe sets, http://www.affymetrix.com/support/technical/byproduct.affx?product=hgu133, Santa Clara, CA) at 45°C for 16 hours and then washed and stained using the GeneChip Fluidics. The arrays were scanned to a target intensity of 500 by a GeneArray Scanner and patterns of hybridization detected as light emitted from the fluorescent reporter groups incorporated into the target and hybridized to oligonucleotide probes. The microarray data (RMA and MAS format) and accompanying clinical data are available at http://data.cgt.duke.edu/clinicalcancerresearch.
Validation of microarray results
RNA from ovarian cancers analyzed by microarrays was used to validate expression of MAL (which exhibits the highest fold difference in expression between the long-term and short-term survivors), TP53, and IGF2 by quantitative real-time PCR. One microgram of total RNA was reverse transcribed with random hexamer primers using the AMV First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit (Roche, Basel, Switzerland). Subsequent real-time PCR reactions (TaqMan Assays-On-Demand, MAL, Hs00242748_m1; TP53, Hs00153340_m1; IGF2, Hs00171254_m1; Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA) were done according to the recommendations of the manufacturer on an ABI Prism 7900HT Sequence Detection System (Applied Biosystems) with the exceptions that a 25 µL reaction volume was used with 50 total cycles. Relative expression levels of each gene were obtained by normalization to the expression level of BETA-2-MICROGLOBULIN (B2M) (TaqMan Assays-on-Demand, Hs99999907_m1) in assays done in tandem with each of the three genes analyzed.
Statistical methodologies
Expression was calculated using the robust multiarray average algorithm (9) implemented in the Bioconductor (http://www.bioconductor.org) extensions to the R statistical programming environment (10). Robust multiarray average generates a background-corrected and quantile-normalized measure of expression (11) on the log 2 scale of measurement. It has been shown to be superior to other methods for detecting differential expression in spike-in experiments (9). The 22,283 probe sets were screened to remove 68 control genes, those with a small variance, and those expressed at low levels. Genes of which correlation with outcome was greater than 0.4 in absolute value were used to develop predictive models for survival via binary tree (12, 13) and linear discriminant (14, 15) analyses. Similar approaches have been taken in other studies of various cancer types (16, 17).
Tree analysis. Bayesian classification tree analysis recursively partitions the sample into subgroups according to levels of covariates and associates with each a predictive probability for the outcome variable (18). With categorical or continuous covariates, the partitioning is based on an underlying nonparametric model that is consistent with the retrospective sampling design we employ, and a conservative approach was taken to select predictors that define significant partitions (19). We generated multiple trees using this approach and based predictions on model averages (i.e., model-weighted predictions of those trees). In each leave-one-out cross-validation analysis, a single tree dominated the model average. In summarizing the overall tree analysis, we report the tree which dominated the most cross-validation runs.
Linear discriminant analysis. We employed a method to identify linear discriminant models defined by subsets of the expression variables that are predictive of survival. To identify parsimonious models and to avoid overfitting the data, this approach involves a variable that penalizes model complexity. For each value of that variable that we entertain, out-of-sample predictions were generated using a model average of the top five models identified. The model average associated with the value of the penalty variable achieving the best out-of-sample predictive performance was reported.
Combined tree and linear discriminant (hybrid) modeling. Tree and linear discriminant function predictions were averaged to form composite predictions. Predictions based on the two forms of analyses were equally weighted. Ninety-percent predictive interval estimates were calculated by averaging upper and lower limits of the 90% predictive intervals calculated under the two models. This procedure is conservative insofar as coverage probabilities exceed the nominal unless the predictions are perfectly positively associated (in which case they agree).
Cross-validation analyses. Leave-one-out cross-validation was used to select and evaluate models. This allows for choice among tree and linear discriminant models of varying complexities on the basis of ability to predict samples not used to fit the models. Here, both variable/"feature" selection (the choice of which subset of the large list of potential expression and clinical measures to include in the model) and estimation (the determination of how to include those chosen) were cross-validated. For each model, out-of-sample predictive probabilities were thresholded at 1/2 to determine predictive classifications and out-of-sample classification accuracy was defined as the fraction of predicted and true classifications in agreement. Tree and linear discriminant models with best out-of-sample classification accuracy were chosen for inclusion in the predictive model. The two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test for two sample comparisons was used in descriptive analyses. Fold change was calculated as 2d, where d is mean (log 2 scaled) expression in the comparison group minus that in the baseline group; a fold change of 1 corresponds to no difference, 2 to a doubling, etc. Unless otherwise specified, short-term survivors serve as baseline.
External validation. Gene expression data recently became available from an independent set of ovarian cancers (20) and this was used to perform an external validation of the genes that comprise our linear discriminant model for survival. The data were organized into two classes and a Kaplan-Meier curve generated to test the difference in outcome between the two classes as previously described (21). Genes used in our survival model were mapped from U133 microarrays to U95Av2 using the "best match" provided by Affymetrix (http://www.netaffx.com). Expression data for the matching U95Av2 feature sets for all 68 tumors were loaded into Cluster (22) and processed for hierarchical clustering (no additional filtering, genes and arrays were median centered thrice, genes and arrays were normalized once). Genes and arrays were clustered while calculating weights using the uncentered complete correlation metric and displayed using Treeview (http://rana.lbl.gov/EisenSoftware.htm). The two major classes were identified and assigned class membership (0 or 1) and, together with their observed outcome (recurrence or censorship) and time to outcome (provided by S. Cannistra and D. Spentzos), were used to generate a Kaplan-Meier plot and a log-rank statistical using Prism statistical software (GraphPad, San Diego, CA).
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Results |
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Utilization of classification and regression tree models to distinguish short-term and long-term survival. Our previous work has described the use of classification and regression trees together with Bayesian analysis to build predictors of recurrence in breast cancer (7). The most effective of these models makes use of a combination of clinical and gene expression data. We have thus used a similar approach to building a classifier that could distinguish long-term and short-term survival in ovarian cancer.
For this purpose, genes with absolute values of correlation to survival greater than 0.4 were used, netting 478 genes from the pool of 7,821 screened genes (Fig. 1). These genes were then used to build a classifier/predictor that could accurately distinguish short-term and long-term survivors, making use of classification and regression tree analysis methods as we have previously described (18). The best tree models involved expression of two or three genes (and no clinical measures) and achieved 90.7% out-of-sample predictive accuracy, correctly classifying 20 of 24 (83.3%) long-term survivors and 29 of 30 (96.7%) short-term survivors. An example tree from these analyses (Fig. 2A) stratifies the patient population into three groups according to expression of cleavage stimulation factor subunit 3 (CSTF3) and ATP-binding cassette, subfamily D, member 3 (ABCD3). These predictors appeared in the tree with the highest posterior probability in 98% of cross-validation analyses. The gene expression–based tree analysis was compared with the most highly accurate tree models involving only the clinical variables, including CA125. These trees, one for each left-out sample, achieved 67% cross-validation accuracy (63% among short-term survivors, 71% among long-term survivors) and involved only debulking status and age at diagnosis. An example of a tree that uses only clinical data is depicted in Fig. 2B. Clearly, the ability to distinguish long-term and short-term survival was much improved by the gene expression data.
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(TAP). Expression summaries for the genes used in the clinical and gene-based trees involved in the cross-validation predictions of the long-term and short-term survivors are presented in Table 2. This table includes fold differences in expression of these genes in long-term versus short-term survivors and early-stage cancers versus short-term survivors.
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The best multivariate linear discriminant functions correctly classified 19 of 24 (79.2%) long-term survivors and 27 of 30 (90%) short-term survivors, achieving 85.2% out-of-sample classification accuracy. These classifiers also predicted all 11 early-stage cases to be long-term survivors. The discriminant functions involved 186 genes across leave-one-out analyses and reflected models allowing for simple conditional dependencies among gene expression measures given survival category (the case P = 2). The top five genes of representation were clone T-cell differentiation protein (MAL), APMCF1 protein (APMCF1), diphosphoinositol polyphosphate phosphohydrolase type 2 (NUDT4), plakophilin 4 (PKP4), and signal sequence receptor (SSR1). Estimates of fold difference in expression of these genes and those appearing in 15 or more leave-one-out models between short-term and long-term survivors with 95% confidence intervals (CI) are presented in Table 2. The MAL gene, which was the most highly up-regulated in short-term survivors (3-fold), was included in 54 of 54 linear discriminant models used in leave-one-out analyses. None of the other genes was used in all 54 models. MAL was 29-fold higher in short-term survivors compared with early-stage cases.
Combined models. The fact that the tree-based model and the linear discriminant model identified different genes as predictors of long-term and short-term survival suggested the possibility that they addressed different aspects of the underlying biology and, thus, that a combination of the two models would be more effective than either alone. The best tree and discriminant function predictions were combined through a simple predictive model average. This composite model correctly classified 20 of 24 (83.3%) long-term survivors and 29 of 30 (96.7%) short-term survivors and reached an overall out-of-sample predictive accuracy of 90.7%. Further, it classified all 11 early-stage cases as long-term survivors.
Figure 3A to C are plots of leave-one-out out-of-sample validations generated by the best tree, discriminant, and composite (hybrid) models. Classifications are obtained by thresholding predictive probabilities at 0.5. The hybrid model combines two structurally different models, each with 90.7% leave-one-out out-of-sample classification accuracy, to form a composite model with 92.6% classification accuracy, suggesting that the tree and discriminant models provide complementary information for accurate classification.
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Discussion |
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Microarrays that assess global patterns of gene expression have proven useful in defining and predicting clinical phenotypes in a variety of cancer types (24). This includes studies of breast cancer in which several groups have described gene expression patterns that serve as prognostic tools to define risk of recurrence (8, 25) as well as lymph node involvement (7). The work of our own group has shown the value in utilizing methods of analysis that sample multiple forms of data, both clinical and multiple gene expression patterns, so as to achieve a more precise discrimination and prediction of outcome for individual patients (7, 18). This same logic of utilizing multiple forms of data as well as methods of analysis has been applied in the present study to more accurately achieve a classification and prediction of ovarian cancer survival.
Several groups have applied expression array technology to the analysis of ovarian cancers. Many of these studies have compared gene expression between normal ovarian epithelial cells and ovarian cancers. Numerous genes have been identified that seem to be up- or down-regulated in the process of malignant transformation (26–29). In addition, microarrays have shown patterns of gene expression that distinguish between histologic types (30) and stages (31).
In the present study, we used expression arrays to identify gene expression patterns that reflect patient survival. The groups of patients used represent the extremes with respect to outcome (i.e., those who survived either less than 3 years or greater than 7 years). The availability of frozen tumor samples from a significant number of long-term survivors was a strength of this study as was the use of novel and complementary statistical approaches. The observation that no gene was more than 3-fold differentially expressed emphasizes the power of the gene expression patterns versus the analysis of any single gene. Spentzos et al. (20) recently reported the only other study in which microarrays have been used to predict outcome in ovarian cancer. This study involved a group of 68 patients who were not selected based on survival duration. The investigators used Affymetrix U95 microarrays to develop a 115 gene model that classified cases into unfavorable (median survival, 30 months) and favorable (median survival not yet reached) groups that exhibited significantly different survival. In this study there was no attempt to predict survival of individual patients, but the results are consistent with ours and together suggest that clinical differences in outcome are reflected in global patterns of gene expression that can be appreciated using microarrays.
In view of the potential for false-discovery using microarrays, external validation using independent sets of samples is a critical step. In this regard, although we could not directly "validate" our linear discriminant model using the Spentzos et al. data set due to differences in microarray platform (20), we did confirm that expression of the genes that comprise our linear discriminant model held prognostic value in this independent set of tumors processed at a different institution using different microarrays. Additional independent validation studies are needed before patterns of gene expression can be used for clinical predictions.
Another clinically relevant finding in our study was that patterns of gene expression in advanced stage cancers from long-term survivors were shared by the early-stage cancers, none of which have been fatal. This provides compelling evidence that the favorable clinical outcome of both long-term survivors with advanced stage disease and early-stage cases is attributable to a shared underlying pattern of molecular alterations. These findings may have implications for screening as an approach to decrease ovarian cancer mortality, as they suggest that cancers diagnosed at an early stage are less rapidly progressive and likely to have a more favorable outcome even if detected at an advanced stage. Conversely, the observation that none of the early-stage ovarian cancers exhibited patterns of gene expression similar to the more virulent cancers from short-term survivors suggests that the most highly lethal ovarian cancers may not be easily amenable to early detection.
Many of the genes that were critical components of the patterns that discriminated between long-term and short-term survivors are known to affect the virulence of the malignant phenotype. The MAL gene (T-lymphocyte maturation-associated protein) was the most differentially expressed (3-fold higher in cancers from short-term compared with long-term survivors) and also was up-regulated in short-term survivors relative to early-stage disease (29-fold). MAL was included in 54 of 54 linear discriminant models used in leave-one-out analyses, whereas none of the other genes was used in all 54 models. Expression of MAL has been shown previously in ovarian cancers, most notably clear cell and serous cancers (30). The MAL protein has several hydrophobic domains and has been shown to be a component of the protein machinery for apical transport in epithelial polarized cells (32, 33). MAL also is a component of membrane rafts, which are microdomains that play a central role in signal transduction acting as a scaffold in which molecules of signal transduction pathways can interact (33). Further, MAL has been identified as a gene involved in resistance to cancer therapy. MAL was the most differentially expressed gene in microarray experiments that compared IFN-–sensitive and –resistant cutaneous T-cell lymphoma cell lines (34). The emergence of IFN- resistance in this in vitro model was accompanied by a 5.5-fold up-regulation of MAL. In addition, high MAL expression was found to correlate with poor response to therapy in a cohort of patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (34).
Heat shock protein 27 (HSP27) is another gene implicated in resistance to therapy that was more highly expressed in cancers from short-term survivors relative to long-term survivors (1.37-fold) and early-stage cases (1.24-fold). HSP27 is a member of the heat shock protein family of proteins that is normally up-regulated in response to thermal injury and other stresses. Expression of HSP27 has been shown to augment the ability of cancer cells treated with cytotoxic chemotherapy to evade apoptosis, and this enhances cell survival (35, 36). This apoptotic resistance is thought to be due to inhibition of activity of the apoptosome and caspase activation complex as well as regulation of proteasome-mediated degradation of apoptosis-regulatory proteins. Several groups have found that high HSP27 expression increases chemoresistance of ovarian cancer cell lines in vitro (37, 38) and this can be reversed by treatment with antisense HSP27 (38). In addition, high expression of HSP27 correlates with poor survival in several types of cancers including glioma (39), breast cancer (40), and ovarian cancer (38).
Lysophospholipase II (LYPLA2), elevated in cancers from patients with short-term survival, may have a biochemical link to the disease process. This is one of a family of enzymes that can convert lysophopholipids to lysophophatidic acid, a molecule commonly elevated in ovarian cancer ascitic fluid (41). Lysophophatidic acid itself has been shown to have a number of biological effects including increasing proliferation, survival, invasiveness, and resistance to cisplatin (42). Ovarian cancer cells have been shown to produce lysophophatidic acid and the increased levels of the LYPLA2 enzyme may be a significant component of this biosynthesis (41).
Finally, it has been suggested that androgens play a role in both the pathogenesis and growth of ovarian cancers (43). The SRD5A1 gene, which was more highly expressed in cancers of long-term survivors, is involved in converting testosterone to its active form dihydrotestosterone. Higher levels of SRD5A1 in ovarian cancers of long-term survivors may reflect maintenance of hormonal responsiveness in ovarian cancers with an inherently less aggressive phenotype, as is the case in breast and prostate cancers.
The value of gene expression–based predictors of prognosis in advanced ovarian cancer will not be fully realized until additional therapies are available for those destined to have poor survival following conventional chemotherapy. In this regard, the expression profiles may not only predict the likelihood of long-term survival following platin chemotherapy but may also yield clues to individual genes involved in tumor development, progression, and response to therapy. It is likely that some of the most differentially expressed genes, such as those discussed above, will represent appealing therapeutic targets.
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Footnotes |
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Note: Supplementary data for this article are available at Clinical Cancer Research Online (http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/).
The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
Received 11/30/04; revised 1/17/05; accepted 2/17/05.
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in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Am J Pathol 2002;161:1825–37.This article has been cited by other articles:
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40; 94.2% predicted long-term survivors); the second separates "late-onset premenopausal" cases (40 < age 
, short-term survivors; 
, long-term survivors.