Investigation of ner repair mechanism enzyme expression changes in prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is one of the most common malignancies in men and is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths. In the pathogenesis of prostate cancer, genetic and epigenetic changes as well as disorders in DNA damage repair mechanisms play an important role. One of these mechanisms, nucleotide excision repair (NER), repairs extensive DNA damage caused by environmental factors such as UV rays, chemical agents, and cigarette smoke. The ERCC2 and ERCC5 proteins involved in the NER mechanism play central roles in the DNA repair process. The ERCC2 gene encodes a helicase that opens the damaged region of DNA, while the ERCC5 gene encodes an endonuclease that enables the cutting of damaged DNA. In this study, ERCC2 and ERCC5 gene expressions were examined in tumor and normal tissues of prostate cancer patients. In the study, biopsy samples taken from a total of 50 patients and confirmed pathologically were analyzed by RT-PCR. According to the findings, ERCC2 gene expression increased 2.25 times in tumor tissue compared to normal tissues, but this increase was not found to be statistically significant (p=0.12). ERCC5 gene expression increased significantly in tumor tissue compared to normal tissues (p=0.005) and this increase was calculated as 5.94 times. In addition, no statistically significant correlation was found between ERCC2 and ERCC5 gene expressions. It was observed that clinical variables such as smoking, diabetes, hypertension, nodule presence, Gleason score and PIRADS score did not have any effect on gene expressions. In conclusion, high expression of ERCC5 gene in prostate cancer shows that NER pathway has an important role in this disease and ERCC5 can be considered as a potential biomarker. It is thought that our study will contribute to the literature on understanding the role of DNA repair mechanisms in the development of prostate cancer.