Pp. Banerjee et al., LOBE-SPECIFIC APOPTOTIC CELL-DEATH IN RAT PROSTATE AFTER ANDROGEN ABLATION BY CASTRATION, Endocrinology, 136(10), 1995, pp. 4368-4376
It is well established that androgens are central to regulation of the
growth of the mammalian prostate gland. Conversely, androgen deprivat
ion by castration induces rapid cell death in the ventral prostate via
an apoptotic mechanism. To date, most studies of cell death in the ro
dent prostate have focused on the ventral lobe, with little attention
directed to the dorsal and lateral lobes. The results presented herein
demonstrate that cell death in the rat prostate gland caused by castr
ation is lobe specific. In particular, castration caused decreases in
wet weights and protein contents of all three prostatic lobes, but the
se events were more rapid and profound in the ventral than in the dors
al and lateral lobes. Reduced epithelial cell size was apparent in the
three lobes as well. However, castration resulted in loss of DNA cont
ent in the ventral lobe only. To confirm this finding, and to examine
apoptosis of individual cells, we used in situ labeling of fragmented
DNA, supported by biochemical analysis of DNA integrity in agarose gel
s. With both approaches, significant cell death in response to castrat
ion was seen in the ventral lobe but not the dorsal and lateral lobes.
Taken together, these results clearly indicate that there are lobe-sp
ecific differences in the response of the rat prostate to androgen abl
ation by castration, with apoptotic cell death occurring in the ventra
l lobe of the prostate but to a far lesser extent, if at all, in the d
orsal and lateral lobes. Moreover, castration caused apoptotic death o
f both epithelial and stromal cells of the ventral prostate, with thes
e cells dying throughout the ductal network of the ventral prostate ra
ther than being restricted to a particular region. We suggest that lob
e-specific differences in androgen responsiveness in the rat prostate
may provide an appropriate model for the study of androgen-independent
prostatic cell survival during tumor progression.