Low-dose antimony exposure promotes prostate cancer proliferation by inhibiting ferroptosis via activation of the Nrf2-SLC7A11-GPX4 pathway

Antimony (Sb) is a typical environmental pollutant. With the development of industrialization, antimony is widely used in daily life and enters the human body through the food chain, water source, air pollution, and other channels. The risk of antimony exposure has emerged as one of the public's major health concerns. Current research on antimony shows that antimony has certain biological toxicity, and antimony exposure may be one of the carcinogenic risk factors for bladder cancer, prostate cancer (PCa), and other cancers. But the molecular mechanism of antimony exposure in PCa is still unclear. Our results showed that serum antimony levels were significantly higher in PCa patients than in benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and high levels of serum antimony were associated with poorer prognosis in PCa. We demonstrate that antimony exposure promotes PCa progression in vivo and in vitro. In addition, our results also showed that low-dose antimony exposure resulted in increased GSH, increased GPX4 expression, and decreased Fe2+. Since GPX4 and Fe2+ are important molecular features in the mechanism of ferroptosis, we further found that low-dose antimony exposure can inhibit RSL3-induced ferroptosis and promote PCa proliferation. Finally, our study demonstrates that low-dose antimony exposure promotes Nrf2 expression, increases the expression level of SLC7A11, and then increases the expression of GPX4, inhibits ferroptosis, and promotes PCa progression. Taken together, our experimental results suggest that low-dose antimony exposure promotes PCa cell proliferation by inhibiting ferroptosis through activation of the Nrf2-SLC7A11-GPX4 pathway. These findings highlight the link between low-dose antimony exposure and the Nrf2-SLC7A11-GPX4 ferroptosis pathway, providing a new potential direction for the prevention and treatment of PCa.