New study below.
For years, there have been studies on the crosstalk between PCa (epithelial) cells & stromal cells in the prostate. Enough to convince me that I'm better off without the "mother ship", as Nalakrats calls it.
& now we have a study that looked at the interaction with "muscle cells that surround the prostate".
"We found that co-culturing of prostate cancer cells with skeletal or smooth muscle cells expands the subpopulations of cancer cells with features characteristic of cancer stem-like cells, including anchorage-independent growth, elevated CD133 expression and drug resistance. These changes in the properties of cancer cells depended on: (1) the muscle cell-induced increases in the concentrations of interleukins 4 and 13; (2) the cytokine-induced upregulation of the expression of syncytin 1 and annexin A5; and (3) cancer cell fusion. In human prostate cancer tissues, expression of syncytin 1 and annexin A5, proteins that we found to be required for the cell fusion, positively correlated with the cancer development suggesting that these proteins can be used as biomarkers to evaluate cancer progression and potential therapeutic targets. Implications: The discovered effects of muscle cells on prostate cancer cells reveal a novel and specific pathway in which muscle cells in the microenvironment of prostate cancer cells promote cell fusion and cancer progression."
Scary stuff.
-Patrick
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/305...
Mol Cancer Res. 2018 Dec 26. pii: molcanres.0500.2018. doi: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-18-0500. [Epub ahead of print]
Interactions with muscle cells boost fusion, stemness and drug resistance of prostate cancer cells.
Uygur B1, Leikina E1, Melikov K1, Villasmil R2, Verma SK3, Vary CPH4, Chernomordik LV5.
Author information
1
NICHD, NIH.
2
NEI, NIH.
3
Section on Membrane Biology, NICHD, NIH.
4
Center for Molecular Medicine, Maine medical Center Research Institute.
5
Section on Membrane Biology, NICHD, NIH chernoml@mail.nih.gov.
Abstract
Poorly understood interactions with non-malignant cells within the tumor microenvironment play an important role in cancer progression. Here, we explored interactions between prostate cancer and muscle cells that surround the prostate. We found that co-culturing of prostate cancer cells with skeletal or smooth muscle cells expands the subpopulations of cancer cells with features characteristic of cancer stem-like cells, including anchorage-independent growth, elevated CD133 expression and drug resistance. These changes in the properties of cancer cells depended on: (1) the muscle cell-induced increases in the concentrations of interleukins 4 and 13; (2) the cytokine-induced upregulation of the expression of syncytin 1 and annexin A5; and (3) cancer cell fusion. In human prostate cancer tissues, expression of syncytin 1 and annexin A5, proteins that we found to be required for the cell fusion, positively correlated with the cancer development suggesting that these proteins can be used as biomarkers to evaluate cancer progression and potential therapeutic targets. Implications: The discovered effects of muscle cells on prostate cancer cells reveal a novel and specific pathway in which muscle cells in the microenvironment of prostate cancer cells promote cell fusion and cancer progression.
PMID: 30587522 DOI: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-18-0500
