Stella Maris Remigio

Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer diagnosed in men. In the normal prostate epithelia, neuroendocrine (NE) cells, which exhibit hybrid neuronal-epithelial phenotypes are of neural crest origin and present at low quantities to promote prostatic growth, differentiation, regulation, and the overall health of the prostate. In the case of advanced prostate cancer, NE-like cells arise from prostate cancer tumor cells through a process called NE-differentiation. These NE cells are thought to play a role in disease progression through secretion factors that induce signal-transduction pathways that promote survival, growth, motility and metastatic potential of the cancer. A previous study confirmed NE secretion role from conditioned media (CM) in increasing tumor cell proliferation rates on LNCaP (androgen-sensitive) and PC3 (androgen-independent) prostate cancer cell lines. However, no studies, up to this point, have been done to show the direct relationship between NE cell secretion and metastasis. The main goal of this study was to look at the effect of CM from NE cells (NE1.8 prostate cancer cell line) on PC-3 and LNCaP cell migration. To elucidate the relationship between NE secretion and cell migration, conditioned media from NE1.8 cells, which have been permanently differentiated from LNCaP via long-term androgen-depletion (resembling androgen-deprivation therapy used to treat androgen-sensitive prostate cancer) was collected and used to treat PC-3 and LNCaP in a cell migration assay at 100% CM, 50%CM, and 5%CM. This study found that higher levels of CM from control cells and NE cells resulted in slower migration in both PC-3 and LNCaP cells, suggesting that NE secretions promote prostate cancer progression in ways other than increasing tumor cell migration rates.