Contributions of epithelial-mesenchymal transition and cancer stem cells to the development of castration resistance of prostate cancer

Molecular Cancer

Review

Ping Li¹  Ru Yang¹  Wei-Qiang Gao² 

[1] State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, Stem Cell Research Center, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China;State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, Stem Cell Research Center, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China;Med-X Research Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China;

关键词: Castration-resistant;    Prostate cancer;    Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition;    Cancer stem cells;    Signaling pathways;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1476-4598-13-55

 received in 2013-11-15, accepted in 2014-03-03,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

An important clinical challenge in prostate cancer therapy is the inevitable transition from androgen-sensitive to castration-resistant and metastatic prostate cancer. Albeit the androgen receptor (AR) signaling axis has been targeted, the biological mechanism underlying the lethal event of androgen independence remains unclear. New emerging evidences indicate that epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and cancer stem cells (CSCs) play crucial roles during the development of castration-resistance and metastasis of prostate cancer. Notably, EMT may be a dynamic process. Castration can induce EMT that may enhance the stemness of CSCs, which in turn results in castration-resistance and metastasis. Reverse of EMT may attenuate the stemness of CSCs and inhibit castration-resistance and metastasis. These prospective approaches suggest that therapies target EMT and CSCs may cast a new light on the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) in the future. Here we review recent progress of EMT and CSCs in CRPC.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Li et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.