Reprogramming of Prostate Cancer Cells - Technical Challenges

• Published in: Current urology reports Vol. 16; no. 1; p. 468
• Main Authors: Borges, Gisely T., Vêncio, Eneida F., Vêncio, Ricardo Z. N., Vessella, Robert L., Ware, Carol B., Liu, Alvin Y.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 2015
• Subjects: Cell Dedifferentiation; Cell Line, Tumor; Cellular Reprogramming; Humans; Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Neoplastic Stem Cells - cytology; Nephrology; Principal Component Analysis; Prostate - cytology; Prostatic Neoplasms; Regenerative Medicine (A Atala; Section Editor; Topical Collection on Regenerative Medicine; Urology; Principal components analysis; Reprogramming; Prostate cancer; LuCaP xenografts; Cell transcriptome
• ISSN: 1527-2737; 1534-6285
• DOI: 10.1007/s11934-014-0468-4

Prostate cancer progression is characterized by tumor dedifferentiation. Cancer cells of less differentiated tumors have a gene expression/transcriptome more similar to that of stem cells. In dedifferentiation, cancer cells may follow a specific program of gene expression changes to a stem-like state. In order to treat cancer effectively, the stem-like cancer cells and cancer differentiation pathway need to be identified and studied. Due to the very low abundance of stem-like cancer cells, their isolation from fresh human tumors is technically challenging. Induced pluripotent stem cell technology can reprogram differentiated cells into stem-like, and this may be a tool to generate sufficient stem-like cancer cells.