Intermediate basal cells of the prostate: In vitro and in vivo characterization

Abstract

PrEC represents an epithelial population whose basal characteristics are modified in response to matrigel, stromal factors, and senescence, consistent with a transient amplifying population. These cells may derive from a previously unrecognized, involucrin-positive subset present in vivo.

Epithelial-Restricted Gene Profile of Primary Cultures from Human Prostate Tumors: A Molecular Approach to Predict Clinical Behavior of Prostate Cancer

“…Cytospins of cultured cells were analyzed by immunocytochemistry using antibodies against several common prostate epithelial or stromal markers. The results were compared with the immunostaining pattern of commercial PrEC, a well-characterized transiently amplifying, basaloid population that exhibits partial secretory differentiation when reaching senescence (20). All cultures derived from tumors stained positive for the luminal cytokeratins CK8 ( Fig.…”

Highly purified CD44+ prostate cancer cells from xenograft human tumors are enriched in tumorigenic and metastatic progenitor cells

“…That the adult human prostate contains stem cells (SCs) is also supported by the observation that a small number of cells within the prostate possess tremendous proliferative capacity and can form glandular-like structures in reconstituted systems (Hudson et al, 2000). Several populations of putative human prostate stem/progenitor cells have been reported, which include CK5 and CK18 double-positive (CK5 þ /CK18 þ ) intermediate cells (van Leenders et al, 2000;Wang et al, 2001;Tran et al, 2002;Garraway et al, 2003;Bhatia et al, 2005), the side population (SP) cells (Bhatt et al, 2003), and small populations of cells that preferentially express cell surface molecules CD44 (Liu et al, 1997), a2b1 (Collins et al, 2001), or CD133 (Richardson et al, 2004).…”

Effect of selective estrogen receptor modulators on cell proliferation and estrogen receptor activities in normal human prostate stromal and epithelial cells

“…14,15 In cultured prostatic stromal cells, mRNA of androgen receptor (AR) is expressed, [16][17][18] whereas reduced expression of AR protein in late passages has been reported. 18 The commercially available prostatic epithelial cells possess the features of basal epithelia that lack the expression of AR protein; 15,19,20 those cells are not fully differentiated to be the secretory epithelial cells. 15 Currently, we show for the first time that endogenous estrogen receptors were activated by estrogen in the primary cultures of normal human prostate cells, and that their activities were modulated by selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) accompanied by changes in cell growth.…”