Maintenance of Intratumoral Androgens in Metastatic Prostate Cancer: A Mechanism for Castration-Resistant Tumor Growth
Why is this work in the frame?
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Machine scores (provisional)
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
- Teacher spread
- 0.299 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
- Validation status
score_only:v0-immature-baseline· verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it
Abstract
Therapy for advanced prostate cancer centers on suppressing systemic androgens and blocking activation of the androgen receptor (AR). Despite anorchid serum androgen levels, nearly all patients develop castration-resistant disease. We hypothesized that ongoing steroidogenesis within prostate tumors and the maintenance of intratumoral androgens may contribute to castration-resistant growth. Using mass spectrometry and quantitative reverse transcription-PCR, we evaluated androgen levels and transcripts encoding steroidogenic enzymes in benign prostate tissue, untreated primary prostate cancer, metastases from patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer, and xenografts derived from castration-resistant metastases. Testosterone levels within metastases from anorchid men [0.74 ng/g; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.59-0.89] were significantly higher than levels within primary prostate cancers from untreated eugonadal men (0.23 ng/g; 95% CI, 0.03-0.44; P < 0.0001). Compared with primary prostate tumors, castration-resistant metastases displayed alterations in genes encoding steroidogenic enzymes, including up-regulated expression of FASN, CYP17A1, HSD3B1, HSD17B3, CYP19A1, and UGT2B17 and down-regulated expression of SRD5A2 (P < 0.001 for all). Prostate cancer xenografts derived from castration-resistant tumors maintained similar intratumoral androgen levels when passaged in castrate compared with eugonadal animals. Metastatic prostate cancers from anorchid men express transcripts encoding androgen-synthesizing enzymes and maintain intratumoral androgens at concentrations capable of activating AR target genes and maintaining tumor cell survival. We conclude that intracrine steroidogenesis may permit tumors to circumvent low levels of circulating androgens. Maximal therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer will require novel agents capable of inhibiting intracrine steroidogenic pathways within the prostate tumor microenvironment.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
The record
- Venue
- Cancer Research
- Topic
- Prostate Cancer Treatment and Research
- Field
- Medicine
- Canadian institutions
- Immunovaccine (Canada)
- Funders
- National Center for Research ResourcesOregon National Primate Research CenterNational Cancer InstituteProstate Cancer FoundationNational Institutes of HealthUniversity of WashingtonNational Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney DiseasesU.S. Department of Defense
- Keywords
- Prostate cancerCastrationAndrogenMedicineProstateOrchiectomyTestosterone (patch)Internal medicineAndrogen deprivation therapyAndrogen receptorCYP17A1Cancer researchCancerIntracrineEndocrinologyOncologyBiologyHormoneGeneReceptor
- Has abstract in OpenAlex
- yes