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Bone metastasis is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in prostate cancer. While cancer stem-like cells have been implicated as a cell of origin for prostate cancer metastasis, the pathways that enable metastatic development at distal sites remain largely unknown. In this study, we illuminate pathways relevant to bone metastasis in this disease. We observed that cyclin A1 (CCNA1) protein expression was relatively higher in prostate cancer metastatic lesions in lymph node, lung, and bone/bone marrow. In both primary and metastatic tissues, cyclin A1 expression was also correlated with aromatase(CYP19A1), a key enzyme that directly regulates the local balance of androgens to estrogens. Cyclin A1 overexpression in the stem-like ALDH^high subpopulation of PC3M cells, one model of prostate cancer, enabled bone marrow integration and metastatic growth. Further, cells obtained from bone marrow metastatic lesions displayed self-renewal capability in colony forming assays. In the bone marrow, cyclin A1 and aromatase enhanced local bonemarrow-releasing factors, including androgen receptor, estrogen and matrix metalloproteinase MMP9 and promoted the metastatic growth of prostate cancer cells. Moreover, ALDH^high tumor cells expressing elevated levels of aromatase stimulated tumor/host estrogen production and acquired agrowth advantage in the presence of host bone marrow cells.Overall, these findings suggest that local production of steroids and MMPs in the bone marrow may provide a suitable microenvironment for ALDH^high prostate cancer cells to establish metastatic growths, offering new approaches to therapeutically target bone metastases.

One mechanism of resistance of prostate cancer (PCa) to enzalutamide (MDV3100) treatment is the increased expression of AR variants lacking the ligand binding-domain, the best characterized of which is AR-V7. We have previously reported that Phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate 5-kinase alpha (PIP5K alpha), is a lipid kinase that links to CDK1 and AR pathways. The discovery of PIP5K alpha inhibitor highlight the potential of PIP5K1 alpha as a drug target in PCa. In this study, we show that AR-V7 expression positively correlates with PIP5K1 alpha in tumor specimens from PCa patients. Overexpression of AR-V7 increases PIP5K1 alpha, promotes rapid growth of PCa in xenograft mice, whereas inhibition of PIP5K1 alpha by its inhibitor ISA-2011B suppresses the growth and invasiveness of xenograft tumors overexpressing AR-V7. PIP5K1 alpha is a key co-factor for both AR-V7 and AR, which are present as protein-protein complexes predominantly in the nucleus of PCa cells. In addition, PIP5K1 alpha and CDK1 influence AR-V7 expression also through AKT-associated mechanism dependent on PTEN-status. ISA-2011B disrupts protein stabilization of AR-V7 which is dependent on PIP5K1 alpha, leading to suppression of invasive growth of AR-V7-high tumors in xenograft mice. Our study suggests that combination of enzalutamide and PIP5K1 alpha may have a significant impact on refining therapeutic strategies to circumvent resistance to antiandrogen therapies.

Currently, no effective targeted therapeutics exists for treatment of metastatic prostate cancer (PCa). Given that matrix metalloproteinases 9 (MMP9) and its associated vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) are critical for tumor vascularization and invasion under castration-resistant condition, it is therefore of great importance to define the functional association and interplay between androgen receptor (AR) and MMP9 and their associated key survival and invasion pathways in PCa cells. Here, we found that there was a significant correlation between MMP9 and AR protein expression in primary and metastatic PCa tissues, and a trend that high level of MMP9 expression was associated with poor prognosis. We demonstrated that constitutive activation of AR increased expression of MMP9 and VEGF/VEGF receptors. We further showed that AR exerts its effect on MMP9/VEGF signaling axis through PIP5K1α/AK. We showed that MMP9 physically interacted with PIP5K1α via formation of protein-protein complexes. Furthermore, elevated expression of MMP9 enhanced ability of AR to activate its target gene cyclin A1. The elevated sequential activation of AR/PIP5K1α/AKT/MMP9/VEG signaling axis contributed to increased invasiveness and growth of metastatic tumors. Conversely, treatment with PIP5K1α inhibitor significantly suppressed invasiveness of PCa cells expressing constitutively activated AR, this was coincident with its inhibitory effect of this inhibitor on AR/MMP9/VEGF pathways. Our results suggest that AR and MMP9-associated network proteins may be effectively targeted by blocking PIP5K1α/AKT pathways using PIP5K1α inhibitor in metastatic PCa.