Cell Plasticity in a Mouse Model of Benign Prostate Hyperplasia Drives Amplification of Androgen-Independent Epithelial Cell Populations Sensitive to Antioxidant Therapy.

Benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) is caused by the nonmalignant enlargement of the transition zone of the prostate gland, leading to lower urinary tract symptoms. Although current medical treatments are unsatisfactory in many patients, the limited understanding of the mechanisms driving disease progression prevents the development of alternative therapeutic strategies. The probasin-prolactin (Pb-PRL) transgenic mouse recapitulates many histopathological features of human BPH.

[Prostatic luminal progenitors: From tissue regeneration to therapeutic escape].

Inhibition of androgen signaling is the gold standard treatment of benign prostate hyperplasia and prostate cancer. Despite the initial response to these treatments, therapeutic resistance is ultimately observed in most patients. Single cell RNAseq studies have shown that castration-tolerant luminal cells share several molecular and functional features with cells identified as luminal progenitor in physiological conditions.

Transcriptomic Signature and Growth Factor Regulation of Castration-Tolerant Prostate Luminal Progenitor Cells.

The molecular and cellular mechanisms that drive castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) remain poorly understood. LSC cells defines an FACS-enriched population of castration-tolerant luminal progenitor cells that has been proposed to promote tumorigenesis and CRPC in -deficient mice. The goals of this study were to assess the relevance of LSC cells through the analysis of their molecular proximity with luminal progenitor-like cell clusters identified by single-cell (sc)RNA-seq analyses of mouse and human prostates, and to investigate their regulation by in silico-predicted growth factors present in the prostatic microenvironment.

Prostate luminal progenitor cells: from mouse to human, from health to disease.

Stem and progenitor cells of the adult prostate epithelium have historically been believed to reside mainly or exclusively within the basal cell compartment and to possess basal-like phenotypic characteristics. Within the past decade, evidence of the existence of luminal epithelial cells exhibiting stem/progenitor properties has been obtained by lineage tracing and by functional characterization of sorted luminal-like cells. In 2020, the boom of single-cell transcriptomics led to increasingly exhaustive profiling of putative mouse luminal progenitor cells and, importantly, to the identification of cognate cells in the human prostate.