Freedman JA, et al. - Given the correlation of phenotypic characteristics of stemness with poor cancer prognosis, researchers investigated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of stemness-associated genes and assessed their links with prostate cancer survival in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. SNPs of CD44 (rs9666607), ABCC1(rs35605 and rs212091) and GDF15 (rs1058587) were found to be related to prostate cancer survival and predicted to be functional. A role was predicted for rs9666607 of CD44 and rs35605 of ABCC1 in RNA splicing regulation, rs212091 of ABCC1 in miRNA binding site activity and rs1058587 of GDF15 in causing an amino acid change. The potential utility of these SNPs as novel prognostic markers for overall survival of prostate cancer was demonstrated and a contribution of the stemness pathway to prostate cancer patient outcome was supported.