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Prostate Carcinogenesis Essay

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Biology Colloquium 595 (09/22/2014): ER plus AR-mediated effects and estrogen genotoxicity are all required in combination to induce prostate cancer by Dr. Bosland.

Prostate Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S and is responsible for 10% of the death in men because of cancer. Dr. Maarten C.Bosland at UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago) spoke about his study of prostate carcinogenesis on rats and deduced a working hypothesis which might help pinpointing the main cause of this cancer. He based his study on the fact that castration and estrogen treatment can lead to regression of prostate cancer and went on to explain the importance of Testosterone and its relation with the androgen and estrogen receptor in context with the size of prostate gland and thus …show more content…

Dr Bosland presented his hypothesis saying only hormones could not be solely responsible for the cause of carcinogenesis but that other factors or rather a combination of several factors induce prostate carcinogenesis. After performing several studies on rats, his team and he stated a hypothesis that testosterone in the presence of DHT (5 alpha reductase) acted on the Androgen receptor and even CYP19 (aromatase) acted on testosterone and became the estrogen receptor. They also observed that the estrogen receptor lead to a series of apurinic changes that lead to mutations in the DNA and thus chemical carcinogenesis as a result of DNA damage. The team further on combined the two hypothesis and came to the conclusion that a mechanism of estradiol genotoxicity might even be involved in establishing the cancer as a redox cycling of enzymatic reactions were observed which lead to the production of superoxide oxygen and Quinone-these acted as DNA adducts and are responsible for oxidative DNA damage. They are still working on their

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