Figure 4

Kaplan–Meier analysis of increased BMP-6 activity in primary prostate cancer. (a) Patients with primary prostate cancer expressing high level of BMP-6 and low level of noggin were more likely to develop distant metastasis. (b) Patients with primary prostate cancer expressing high level of BMP-6 and low levels of both noggin and sclerostin were more likely to develop distant metastasis. (c) High Gleason score predicts development of distant metastasis in our patient cohort. (d, e) Of the high-grade prostate cancer, high activity of BMP-6 inferred a poor prognosis in our patient cohort. (f, g) As BMP-6 activity has been shown to promote prostate cancer metastasized to bone, we analyzed its effect on the timing for development of bony metastasis in prostate cancer. We found that high activity of BMP-6 in the primary prostate cancer infers a risk to earlier development of bone metastasis in our patient cohort.