The diverse and contrasting effects of using human prostate cancer cell lines to study androgen receptor roles in prostate cancer / 亚洲男科学杂志(英文版)

The androgen receptor (AR) plays an important role in the development and progression of prostate cancer (PCa). Androgen deprivation therapy is initially effective in blocking tumor growth, but it eventually leads to the hormone-refractory state. The detailed mechanisms of the conversion from androgen dependence to androgen independence remain unclear. Several PCa cell lines were established to study the role of AR in PCa, but the results were often inconsistent or contrasting in different cell lines, or in the same cell line grown under different conditions. The cellular and molecular alteration of epithelial cells and their microenvironments are complicated, and it is difficult to use a single cell line to address this important issue and also to study the pathophysiological effects of AR. In this paper, we summarize the different effects of AR on multiple cell lines and show the disadvantages of using a single human PCa cell line to study AR effects on PCa. We also discuss the advantages of widely used epithelium-stroma co-culture systems, xenograft mouse models, and genetically engineered PCa mouse models. The combination of in vitro cell line studies and in vivo mouse models might lead to more credible results and better strategies for the study of AR roles in PCa.

Expression of human AR cDNA driven by its own promoter results in mild promotion, but not suppression, of growth in human prostate cancer PC-3 cells / 亚洲男科学杂志(英文版)

<p><b>AIM</b>To examine the physiological role of the androgen receptor (AR) in the PC-3 cell line by transfecting full-length functional AR cDNA driven by its natural human AR promoter.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>We generated an AR-expressing PC-3(AR)9 stable clone that expresses AR under the control of the natural human AR promoter and compared its proliferation to that of the PC-3(AR)2 (stable clone that expresses AR under the control of the cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter, established by Heisler et al.) after androgen treatment.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>We found that dihydrotestosterone (DHT) from 0.001 nmol/L to 10 nmol/L induces cell cycle arrest or inhibits proliferation of PC-3(AR)2 compared with its vector control, PC-3(pIRES). In contrast, PC-3(AR)9 cell growth slightly increased or did not change when treated with physiological concentrations of 1 nmol/L DHT.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>These data suggest that intracellular control of AR expression levels through the natural AR promoter might be needed for determining AR function in androgen-independent prostate cancer (AIPC) PC-3 cells. Unlike previous publications that showed DHT mediated suppression of PC-3 growth after transfection of viral promoter-driven AR overexpression, we report here that DHT-mediated PC-3 proliferation is slightly induced or does not change compared with its baseline after reintroducing AR expression driven by its own natural promoter, as shown in PC-3(AR)9 prostate cancer cells.</p>