Human prostatic cells in culture: Different testosterone metabolic profile in epithelial cells and fibroblasts from normal or hyperplastic prostates

5α-reductase and 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase expression in epithelial cells from hyperplastic and malignant human prostate

“…It is also in agreement with results on the PC3 cancer cell line (Elo et al, 1996;Castagnetta et al, 1994), although other cell lines, such as DU-145 and LNCaP, generate a relatively high amount of DHT (Castagnetta et al, 1994;Smith et al, 1994). However, other studies have shown that, in BPH slices and suspensions, the predominant pathway is via 5␣-R (Smith et al, 1994) and that the 17␤-HSD pathway predominates in the fibroblasts and not in epithelial cells of normal and hyperplastic prostate tissue (Berthaut et al, 1996). According to Martel et al (1992), there is a slight preference for the reductive over the oxidative activity of 17␤-HSD in prostate tissue.…”

“…These, however, may have been contaminated with tissue fragments and/or fibroblasts. Berthaut et al (1996) have suggested that, in the normal prostate, 5␣-R is the predominant activity in isolated epithelial cells and 17␤-HSD in fibroblasts, but took no account of 5␣-R and 17␤-HSD isoforms. Elo et al (1996) have investigated the expression of 17␤-HSD type 1, 2 and 3 in BPH tissue, prostatic cancer tissue, and in cultured PC-3 prostatic cancer cells but did not consider cell specificity.…”

“…Primary cultures of prostate cells have been used to study both the cell-specificity (Orlowski and Clark, 1991) and preferential pathways (Berthaut et al, 1996) of T metabolism. In our earlier studies (Délos et al, 1995), as expected from results on DU145 cells (Kaefer et al, 1996;Délos et al, 1994) (derived from a metastasis of an epithelial human prostate carcinoma) and on benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) cells maintained in culture for several days (Hirsch et al, 1993), we have detected 5␣-R1 in cultured prostate epithelial cells.…”

Pharmacological and molecular evidence for the expression of the two steroid 5α-reductase isozymes in normal and hyperplastic human prostatic cells in culture

“…The 5␣-reduced metabolites obtained were essentially DHT and 3␣-and 3␤-androstanediols; little if any 5␣-androstanedione was produced, as 98-99% of total substrate radioactivity was always recovered between T, DHT, 3␣-and 3␤-androstanediols, and ⌬4-androstenedione. However, the overall metabolic profile was strikingly different in the three cell types as 17␤-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase activity was much higher in NF than in NE and even 275-fold higher in BPHF relative to NF [22].…”

“…In particular, we have shown that this metabolism was reproducible in each category of cells: epithelial cells (NE) or fibroblasts from normal prostate (NF) or fibroblasts from BPH (BPHF) [22].…”