| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
Advances in Brief |
1Departments of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences, 2Medicine, and 3Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York
| ABSTRACT |
|---|
|
|
|---|
| Introduction |
|---|
|
|
|---|
190,000 new cases and 30,000 deaths from prostate cancer (1)
. Age is a major risk factor; the incidence is 1 in 53 for men in their 50s but 1 in 7 for men from 60 to 80 years of age. A chemopreventive modality that can suppress or delay the clinical symptoms of prostate cancer would be well suited for preserving the quality of life in high-risk elderly men. In a previous randomized, placebo-controlled cancer prevention trial in which prostate cancer was evaluated as a secondary end point (974 of the 1312 subjects in the cohort were men), supplementation with a nutritional dose of selenium was found to reduce prostate cancer incidence by 50% (2
, 3)
. Recent studies by Dong et al. (4)
showed that selenium inhibited human prostate cancer cell growth, blocked cell cycle progression at multiple transition points, and induced programmed cell death. Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is a gene known to be under the control of the androgen receptor (AR) and is a well-accepted marker for the diagnosis and prognosis of prostate cancer. In view of the clinical observation of the effectiveness of selenium in prostate cancer prevention, it is reasonable to believe that selenium might be able to reduce the expression of PSA. If confirmed, this attribute obviously has the advantage of forecasting the responsiveness to selenium intervention. In this report, we describe a series of experiments that were designed to test the hypothesis that selenium is capable of down-regulating PSA through a mechanism of attenuating the functional intensity of the AR signal transduction pathway. As discussed previously (4) , cultured prostate cells respond poorly to selenomethionine (a commonly used selenium reagent) and only when it is present at supraphysiological levels in the medium. A plausible explanation is that prostate cells have a low capacity in metabolizing selenomethionine to methylselenol (CH3SeH), which is believed to be the active species for selenium chemoprevention (5) . This process normally takes place in the liver and kidney. For this reason, methylseleninic acid (CH3SeO2H, abbreviated to MSA) was developed by Ip et al. (6) specifically for in vitro experiments. Once taken up by cells, MSA is readily reduced by glutathione and NADPH to methylselenol (which is rather unstable in itself) via a non-enzymatic reaction. The cellular and molecular responses of prostate cells to physiological concentrations of MSA have been documented in a number of publications (4 , 7, 8, 9, 10) . Thus, we believe we have the right tool to study the effect of selenium on AR signaling.
| Materials and Methods |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Real-Time Reverse Transcription-PCR.
First-strand cDNA was synthesized from 100 ng of total RNA by SuperScript II reverse transcriptase (Invitrogen) following the manufacturers protocol. The PCR primers and TaqMan probes for ß-actin, AR, and PSA were Assays-on-Demand products from Applied Biosystems. Two µl of first-strand cDNA were mixed with 25 µl of 2x Taqman Universal PCR Master Mix (Applied Biosystems) and 2.5 µl of 20x primers/probe mixture in a 50-µl final volume. Temperature cycling and real-time fluorescence measurement were performed using an ABI prism 7700 Sequence Detection System (Applied Biosystems). The PCR conditions were as follows: an initial incubation at 50°C for 2 min, then a denaturation at 95°C for 10 min, followed by 40 cycles of 95°C for 15 s and 60°C for 1 min.
The relative quantitation of gene expression was performed using the comparative CT (
CT) method (12)
. Briefly, the threshold cycle number (CT) was obtained as the first cycle at which a statistically significant increase in fluorescence signal was detected. Data normalization was carried out by subtracting the CT value of ß-actin from that of the target gene. The 
CT was calculated as the difference of the normalized CT values (
CT) of the treatment and control samples: 
CT =
CT treatment -
CT control. Finally, 
CT was converted to fold of change by the following formula: Fold of change = 2-
CT.
Western Blot Analysis.
Details of the procedure were described previously (4)
. Immunoreactive bands were quantitated by volume densitometry and normalized against either glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase or
- actin. The following monoclonal antibodies were used (source): anti-glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (Chemicon, Temecula, CA), anti-
-actin (Sigma Chemical Co., St. Louis, MO), anti-AR (BD Transduction Laboratory, San Jose, CA), and anti-PSA (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz, CA).
Transfection and Luciferase Assay.
An aliquot of 3 x 105 cells was placed in a 6-well plate and then transfected with a total amount of 5 µg of DNA using Superfect (Qiagen, Valencia, CA) according to the manufacturers instructions. Two different constructs were evaluated: the PSA promoter-luciferase reporter plasmid (13)
and the androgen responsive element (ARE)-luciferase reporter plasmid (14)
. The total amount of plasmid DNA was normalized to 5 µg/well by the addition of empty plasmid. The DNA/liposome mixture was removed 3 h later, and cells were treated with different concentrations of MSA in the presence of 10 nM R1881. Cell extracts were obtained after 24 h, and luciferase activity was assayed using the Luciferase Assay System (Promega, Madison, WI). Protein concentration in cell extracts was determined by the Coomassie Plus protein assay kit (Pierce, Rockford, IL). Luciferase activities were normalized by the protein concentration of the sample. All transfection experiments were performed in triplicate wells and repeated at least four times.
Nuclear Lysate Preparation.
Nuclear protein extract was prepared as described previously (15)
. Cells were harvested, washed with PBS twice, and resuspended in a hypotonic buffer [10 mM HEPES-KOH (pH 7.9), 1.5 mM MgCl2, 10 mM KCl, and 0.1% NP40] and incubated on ice for 10 min. Nuclei were precipitated with 3000 x g centrifugation at 4°C for 10 min. After washing once with the hypotonic buffer, the nuclei were lysed in a lysis buffer [50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.0), 150 mM NaCl, and 1% Triton X-100] and incubated on ice for 30 min. The nuclear lysate was precleared by 20,000 x g centrifugation at 4°C for 15 min. Protein concentration was determined by the Coomassie Plus protein assay kit.
Electrophoretic Mobility Shift Assay (EMSA).
A quantity of 20 µg of nuclear protein extract was incubated in a 20-µl solution containing 10 mM HEPES (pH 7.9), 80 mM NaCl, 10% glycerol, 1 mM DTT, 1 mM EDTA, 100 µg/ml poly(deoxyinosinic-deoxycytidylic acid), and the radiolabeled double-stranded AR consensus binding motif 5'-CTAGAAGTCTGGTACAGGGTGTTCTTTTTGCA-3' (Santa Cruz Biotechnology). The protein-DNA complexes were resolved on a 4.5% nondenaturing polyacrylamide gel containing 2.5% glycerol in 0.25x Tris-borate EDTA at room temperature, and the results were autoradiographed. Quantitation of AR DNA-binding activity in the "protein-DNA" bandshift was measured using the Molecular Imager FX System (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA). For the supershift experiment, 20 µg of cell extract protein were incubated with the monoclonal AR antibody (Santa Cruz Biotechnology) for 1 h at 4°C before incubation with the radiolabeled probe.
| Results |
|---|
|
|
|---|
|
|
|
|
MSA Decreases Binding of AR to ARE.
To determine whether MSA might reduce the DNA binding activity of the AR protein to the ARE, we performed EMSA using radiolabeled oligonucleotides of the ARE with nuclear extract from LNCaP cells treated for 30 min with various concentrations of MSA. As shown in Fig. 4, A and B
, a decrease in AR-ARE complex formation was evident with MSA treatment compared with the untreated control. We can rule out the reduced availability of the AR protein as a contributing factor, because there was no change in AR protein after only 30 min of treatment with MSA (see Fig. 2C
). The specificity of the AR-ARE complex was demonstrated by the supershift assay using an antibody against AR (Fig. 4C)
.
|
| Discussion |
|---|
|
|
|---|
In a recent paper, Bhamre et al. (16) reported that although supraphysiological levels of selenomethionine inhibited LNCaP cell growth, selenomethionine did not specifically affect the production of PSA when the results were normalized to the decreased number of viable cells. As explained in the "Introduction," selenomethionine is not a suitable selenium reagent for cell biology studies in vitro, because it is poorly metabolized by cultured epithelial cells to the active monomethylated intermediate. Not surprisingly, many cellular and molecular events that are normally sensitive to modulation by physiological levels of MSA (4 , 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) respond very sluggishly to selenomethionine, and only when it is present at excessively high levels in the medium. Thus, the discrepancy between our study and that of Bhamre et al. (16) can be reconciled by the differences in biochemical reactivity between MSA and selenomethionine.
The clonal expansion of prostate cancer at the early stage is mostly dependent on androgen stimulation. A selenium intervention strategy aimed at dampening the amplitude of androgen signaling could be helpful for controlling prostate cancer in high-risk men. PSA is a well-accepted diagnostic and prognostic biomarker of prostate cancer progression. The down-regulation of PSA by selenium therefore has significant clinical implication. In patients treated with selenium, the monitoring of PSA in the circulation could potentially be evaluated as a barometer to gauge the efficacy of intervention. The benefit might also be extended to the prevention of relapses after endocrine therapy. Recurrent prostate cancer is generally hormone refractory, although the expression of AR is maintained regardless of the clinical stage of the disease (17 , 18) . The fact that PSA continues to be produced by the pathologically advanced cancer suggests that the AR signal transduction pathway is still intact. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Mutations of the AR may enable cells to be sensitized by very low levels of androgens, or perhaps even by non-androgen steroids (19) . Alternatively, the receptor may become promiscuous and can be activated by non-steroidal growth factors and cytokines (20) . Prostate cancer may also adapt to androgen deprivation by increasing the expression of AR through gene amplification (21 , 22) . We have developed a LNCaP subline that is not responsive to androgen but is capable of producing a copious amount of PSA. We are planning to use this cell model to further investigate the role of selenium in AR function when the presence of androgen is no longer required.
| FOOTNOTES |
|---|
The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
Notes: Y. Dong and S. O. Lee contributed equally to this work.
Requests for reprints: Allen C. Gao or Clement Ip, Department of Surgical Oncology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Elm and Carlton Streets, Buffalo, NY 14263.
Received 9/ 4/03. Revised 10/17/03. Accepted 11/ 3/03.
| REFERENCES |
|---|
|
|
|---|

CT method. Methods, 25: 402-408, 2001.[CrossRef][Medline]
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
L. Wang, M. J.L. Bonorden, G.-x. Li, H.-J. Lee, H. Hu, Y. Zhang, J. D. Liao, M. P. Cleary, and J. Lu Methyl-Selenium Compounds Inhibit Prostate Carcinogenesis in the Transgenic Adenocarcinoma of Mouse Prostate Model with Survival Benefit Cancer Prevention Research, May 1, 2009; 2(5): 484 - 495. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
D. Tsavachidou, T. J. McDonnell, S. Wen, X. Wang, F. Vakar-Lopez, L. L. Pisters, C. A. Pettaway, C. G. Wood, K.-A. Do, P. F. Thall, et al. Selenium and Vitamin E: Cell Type- and Intervention-Specific Tissue Effects in Prostate Cancer J Natl Cancer Inst, March 4, 2009; 101(5): 306 - 320. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
S. Liu, H. Zhang, L. Zhu, L. Zhao, and Y. Dong Kruppel-Like Factor 4 Is a Novel Mediator of Selenium in Growth Inhibition Mol. Cancer Res., February 1, 2008; 6(2): 306 - 313. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
D. N. Syed, N. Khan, F. Afaq, and H. Mukhtar Chemoprevention of Prostate Cancer through Dietary Agents: Progress and Promise Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev., November 1, 2007; 16(11): 2193 - 2203. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
J. Y. Chun, Y. Hu, E. Pinder, J. Wu, F. Li, and A. C. Gao Selenium inhibition of survivin expression by preventing Sp1 binding to its promoter Mol. Cancer Ther., September 1, 2007; 6(9): 2572 - 2580. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
U. Peters, C. B Foster, N. Chatterjee, A. Schatzkin, D. Reding, G. L Andriole, E D. Crawford, S. Sturup, S. J Chanock, and R. B Hayes Serum selenium and risk of prostate cancer--a nested case-control study Am. J. Clinical Nutrition, January 1, 2007; 85(1): 209 - 217. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
R. Zhao, F. E. Domann, and W. Zhong Apoptosis induced by selenomethionine and methioninase is superoxide mediated and p53 dependent in human prostate cancer cells Mol. Cancer Ther., December 1, 2006; 5(12): 3275 - 3284. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
B. Husbeck, R. S. Bhattacharyya, D. Feldman, and S. J. Knox Inhibition of androgen receptor signaling by selenite and methylseleninic acid in prostate cancer cells: two distinct mechanisms of action. Mol. Cancer Ther., August 1, 2006; 5(8): 2078 - 2085. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
J. Y. Chun, N. Nadiminty, S. O. Lee, S. A. Onate, W. Lou, and A. C. Gao Mechanisms of selenium down-regulation of androgen receptor signaling in prostate cancer. Mol. Cancer Ther., April 1, 2006; 5(4): 913 - 918. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
A. L. Sabichi, J. J. Lee, R. J. Taylor, I. M. Thompson, B. J. Miles, C. M. Tangen, L. M. Minasian, L. L. Pisters, J. R. Caton, J. W. Basler, et al. Selenium accumulation in prostate tissue during a randomized, controlled short-term trial of l-selenomethionine: a Southwest Oncology Group Study. Clin. Cancer Res., April 1, 2006; 12(7 Pt 1): 2178 - 2184. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
J. Kohrle, F. Jakob, B. Contempre, and J. E. Dumont Selenium, the Thyroid, and the Endocrine System Endocr. Rev., December 1, 2005; 26(7): 944 - 984. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
Y. Dong, H. Zhang, A. C. Gao, J. R. Marshall, and C. Ip Androgen receptor signaling intensity is a key factor in determining the sensitivity of prostate cancer cells to selenium inhibition of growth and cancer-specific biomarkers Mol. Cancer Ther., July 1, 2005; 4(7): 1047 - 1055. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
Z Culig, H Steiner, G Bartsch, and A Hobisch Mechanisms of endocrine therapy-responsive and -unresponsive prostate tumours Endocr. Relat. Cancer, June 1, 2005; 12(2): 229 - 244. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
M. Bonham, J. Posakony, I. Coleman, B. Montgomery, J. Simon, and P. S. Nelson Characterization of Chemical Constituents in Scutellaria baicalensis with Antiandrogenic and Growth-Inhibitory Activities toward Prostate Carcinoma Clin. Cancer Res., May 15, 2005; 11(10): 3905 - 3914. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
S. O. Lee, N. Nadiminty, X. X. Wu, W. Lou, Y. Dong, C. Ip, S. A. Onate, and A. C. Gao Selenium Disrupts Estrogen Signaling by Altering Estrogen Receptor Expression and Ligand Binding in Human Breast Cancer Cells Cancer Res., April 15, 2005; 65(8): 3487 - 3492. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
G. J Beckett and J. R Arthur Selenium and endocrine systems J. Endocrinol., March 1, 2005; 184(3): 455 - 465. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
P. R. Taylor, H. L. Parnes, and S. M. Lippman Science Peels the Onion of Selenium Effects on Prostate Carcinogenesis J Natl Cancer Inst, May 5, 2004; 96(9): 645 - 647. [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
S. D. Cho, C. Jiang, B. Malewicz, Y. Dong, C. Y.F. Young, K.-S. Kang, Y.-S. Lee, C. Ip, and J. Lu Methyl selenium metabolites decrease prostate-specific antigen expression by inducing protein degradation and suppressing androgen-stimulated transcription Mol. Cancer Ther., May 1, 2004; 3(5): 605 - 612. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| Cancer Research | Clinical Cancer Research |
| Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention | Molecular Cancer Therapeutics |
| Molecular Cancer Research | Cancer Prevention Research |
| Cancer Prevention Journals Portal | Cancer Reviews Online |
| Annual Meeting Education Book | Meeting Abstracts Online |