Copy number profiling of prostate cancers from 40 African American patients

African American (AA) men have a significantly higher mortality rate from prostate cancer (PCa) compared to European American (EA) men. AA men are twice as likely to die from PCa compared to EA men and 8 times as likely as Asian American men to die from PCa. The biological basis for these differences in PCa mortality are unclear. We carried out Copy Number Alteration (CNA) studies on a new set of 40 highly tumor-enriched primary PCas and matched benign prostate tissues from AA men using high resolution Affymetrix 6.0 SNP arrays and expression array analysis using RNAs (GSE71016) from the same tissues using high purity tumors from AA men and matched benign tissue. We have confirmed the specific loss of 4p16.3 described previously and identified a novel tumor suppressor gene, RGS12 at this locus that shows significantly decreased expression in AA PCa but not EA EA PCa. Profiles were generated on Affymetrix SNP 6.0 chips. In all, 40 tumors and 40 paired normal samples were profiled, 40 profiles in all. Each tumor was centered on its corresponding normal pair to define copy number alterations (CNA) in that tumor.