In this dataset, all the 7-gene candidates exhibited a significant increase of mRNA expression in the metastasis group relative to localised tumours, with RUVBL1 exhibiting near statistical significance (U2AF2 P = 0.0106, RUVBL1 P = 0.051, HDGF P < 0.0001, FABP4 P = 0.0005, and STMN1 P = 0.032) (Fig. 4a–g ).
The difference in expression levels of XPO1 and POSTN did not reach statistical significance, likely due to the relatively small sample size of the metastasis group ( N = 19) (Supplementary Fig.
Lastly, stathmin (STMN1) is the best-performing single candidate in our signature panel with its highly significant association with biochemical recurrence, patient disease-free survival, and prostate cancer progression.