Presence of androgen receptors must be essential for the effectiveness of anti-androgen therapy against the prostatic cancer. Radioreceptor assay of androgens using cytosol fraction has been studied, but not used widely in the area of prostatic cancer study because of pleomorphism of prostatic cancer cells and difficulty to obtain relatively large amounts of tumor tissues. In this study, we developed a new amplified method to detect the localization of androgen receptors within the human prostatic tissue specimens.
Four BPH tissues were obtained from patients undergoing retropubic prostatectomy. Cryostatfrozen sections of the tissue were cut at 10μm thick, air-dried, fixed in 10% formalin in PBS (pH7.4) for five minutes, and washed in three baths of PBS. The tissue sections were treated with 50μl of 100nM tritiated dihydrotestosterone (
3H-DHT) in a humid box at room temperature for two hours, washed, and air-dried. The sections were then dipped into Sakura MRM-2 autoradiographic emulsion and dried at room temperature, followed by dipping into scintillator solution consisted of 7% PPO and 0.02% POPOP dissolved in dioxan, and exposed in the dark at -85°C for two weeks. After exposure the emulsion sheets covering the sections were developed, and the sections were stained with hematoxylin. As control, the bladder tissue which was not androgen target organ was treated with
3H-DHT using the exactly same methods simultaneusly.
The binding of
3H-DHT to receptors were demonstrated as silver grains on the stained tissue sections. The binding of
3H-DHT to the prostatic tissue was inhibited by additional non-radioactive DHT remarkably (Fig. 3) and by testosterone partially (Fig. 4), but not affected by additional progesterone and 17β-estradiol (Fig. 6). No binding of
3H-DHT to the bladder tissue was found (Fig. 7).
These results showed that the binding of
3H-DHT to the prostatic tissue was a specific reaction of
3H-DHT and androgen receptor.
Androgen receptors were seen in the nuclei and the cytoplasmas of glandular epithelial cells of prostate. However, stromal cells contained less abundant androgen receptors.
The method reported here has several advantages in detecting the androgen receptor of the prostatic tissue in comparison with the radioreceptor assay and other histochemical methods.
1) The needle biopsied specimens are big enough to examine. Therefore, repeated examinations of prostatic cancer patients are available before and after treatment.
2) Morphological observation are also possible on the same specimen because the specimens are stained with hematoxylin simultaneously. Therefore, we can know the relative ratio of androgen receptor positive cells and negative cells.
3) Binding of
3H-DHT to the receptor with this method may be more specific than other histochemical methods, since binding of
3H-DHT to the receptor was inhibited by 200-fold excess of nonradioactive DHT.
4) Treatment of scintillator, fluorographic technique shortens the exposure periods. The exposure periods are approximately six to twelve times shorter than that of the conventional autoradiography.
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