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It is now well documented that E-cadherin expression correlates inversely with tumor grade in various carcinomas including prostate cancer. We also demonstrated a statistically significant correlation between decreased E-cadherin expression and progression-free period in early stage patients treated by radical prostatectomy and decreased survival in patients with advanced stage disease. We now study the relationship between E cadherin and a-catenin expression, because in prostate cancer cell lines, mutational inactivation of the a-catenin gene can be the cause of the impaired E-cadherin function. Twenty patients treated by radical prostatectomy and 32 advanced stage patients were evaluated immunohistochemically for E-cadherin and a-catenin expression. The results were related to tumor grade and disease progression. Four patients in the radical prostatectomy group had aberrant E-cadherin and a-catenin expression and showed disease progression. The other 16 patients were free of progression and had normal E-cadherin and a-catenin expression. In the advanced stage group, 4 of 13 patients with normal E-cadherin staining showed aberrant a-catenin expression and 2 patients (50%) progressed, compared with only 22% progression in patients with both normal E-cadherin and a-catenin expression. The other 19 patients with aberrant E-cadherin and a-catenin staining had the poorest prognosis. Our results suggest that loss of a-catenin expression could be one of the mechanisms responsible for the loss of E-cadherinmediated cell-cell adhesion in human prostate cancer and might in some cases provide prognostic information. Int.

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Prostate development in the first half of gestation is explosive. Thereafter, the prostate basically is a slow-growing organ. Budding tips are the major growth foci during early prostate development, while stromal growth is evenly distributed throughout the prostate, probably indicating that stromal-epithelial interactions do not manifest in enhanced proliferation at their interface. NE cells may have an inhibitory effect on proliferation of exocrine epithelial cells and are probably only associated with differentiation of prostate exocrine cells in the prostate.