Human Prostate Cancer Cell Lines

Prostate cancer affects many men in the West but rarely occurs in Japan or China. Some epidemiological factors that may be important in this are described elsewhere in this volume. Prostate cancer has become the most common malignancy and the second highest cause of cancer death in Western society. The disease is very heterogeneous in terms of grade, genetics, ploidy, and oncogene/tumor suppressor gene expression, and its biological, hormonal, and molecular characteristics are extremely complex. Growth of early prostate cancer requires 5α-dihydrotestosterone produced from testosterone by the 5α-reductase enzyme system; such prostate cells are described as androgen dependent (AD). Subsequently, the prostate cancer cells may respond to androgen but do not require it for growth; these cells are androgen sensitive (AS). Because of the requirement for androgen for growth of prostate cancer, patients whose tumors are not suitable for surgical intervention or radiotherapy may be treated by hormonal intervention, either continuous or intermittent, to prevent prostate cancer cell growth (1–3). This leads to periods of remission from disease, but almost invariably, the prostate cancer recurs, by which time the prostate cancer cells have become androgen-independent (AI) (4,5). This may be accompanied by changes in the androgen receptor (AR), which may undergo mutation (6,7), amplification (8), or loss (9). Prostate cancer cells metastasize to various organs but particularly to local lymph nodes and to skeletal bone.