Background
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common malignancy and the second leading major of cancer death in American males, with an estimated 191,930 new cases and 33,330 deaths expected in 2020 [
1]. Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), including surgical or chemical castration, is the backbone of treatment for all stages of recurrent prostate cancer [
2]. Although highly responsive to this therapy initially, eventually almost all patients will evolve into castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) in 18-24 months [
3]. Consequently, the treatment failed, and most patients died from metastasis. Therefore, understanding the underlying mechanisms of PCa cells castration resistance and metastasis after ADT remains an emergent need.
Recent researches revealed that in the microenvironment of prostate cancer, cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are among the most crucial components and are reported to promote tumorigenesis and progression [
4‐
6]. In addition, several studies demonstrated that CAFs could promote androgen independence and metastatic progression in prostate cancer [
7‐
9]. Significantly, the effect of inhibition of AR signalling in CAFs on PCa metastasis has attracted great attention. Yu et al. demonstrated that AR in CAFs promoted invasion of PCa cells via regulating a series of growth factors [
10]. However, Bianca et al. revealed that inhibiting AR signalling in CAFs could promote prostate cancer cell migration by secreting CCL2 and CXCL8 [
11]. Damien et al. described that AR signalling in CAFs inhibits prostate cancer cell invasion via maintaining the extracellular matrix (ECM) [
12]. Therefore, the roles of AR in CAFs are still controversial and have been a hot topic in prostate cancer research.
Exosomes are nanovesicles which range in size from 30 to 150 nm [
13]. Exosomes can transmit intracellular cargos which include microRNAs (miRNAs), messenger RNAs (mRNAs), long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and proteins to participate in intercellular communication [
14,
15]. Recently, exosome-mediated miRNA delivery has drawn much attention and many studies have showed that exosomal microRNAs contribute to cancer development, such as tumour progression, metastasis, and drug resistance [
16‐
18]. In addition to exosomal miRNAs derived from cancer cells, CAFs-derived exosomal miRNAs have also been found to contribute to therapy resistance in various cancers. Qin et al. demonstrated that exosomal miR-196a from CAFs modulate cisplatin resistance in head and neck cancer [
19]. In ovarian cancer, miR-21 could be transferred from CAFs to cancer cells via exosomes, which decreases tumour cell apoptosis and promotes paclitaxel resistance by binding to APAF1 [
20]. However, whether CAFs-derived exosomes react to ADT are still unclear. Furthermore, the functions of these exosomal miRNAs in regulating metastasis phenotypes of PCa cells have not been clarified.
Herein, we identified that exosomes from CAFs exposed to ADT significantly promoted cell migration and invasion in PCa cells both in vitro and in vivo. By sequencing and verified experiments, we demonstrated that miR-146a-5p was decreased in the exosomes derived from CAFs after ADT. Mechanistically, loss of exosomal miR-146a-5p promoted epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), migration and invasion of PCa cells via activating epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)/ERK pathway. Our findings represent a new important molecular mechanism of metastasis in prostate cancer after hormone therapy. Moreover, it suggests a promising therapeutic strategy to suppress prostate cancer metastasis for patients receiving ADT.
Materials and methods
Isolation of primary CAFs and cell culture
Tumour tissues were obtained from PCa patients treated by radical prostatectomy at the Department of Urology, Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Medicine. As previously described [
21], primary CAFs were isolated from PCa tissues. In this study, we obtained three sets of primary CAFs from three patients, they did not receive any therapy before radical prostatectomy and their characteristics are shown in Additional file
1: Figure S1. All primary CAFs between passages 2 and 10 were used for all experiments. CAF markers including Vimentin, FAP, and α-SMA were determined by immunofluorescence. Androgen deprived prostate tissues were required in radical prostatectomy from patients treated for a long-term period (3–6 months) with abiraterone and leuprolide.
hTERT PF179T CAF were acquired from American Type Culture Collection (ATCC, VA, USA, Cat# CRL-3290), and HEK 293 T, LNCaP, and DU145 were acquired from Cell Bank of Shanghai Institute of Cells, Chinese Academy of Science (Shanghai, China). The prostate cell lines were authenticated (GENEWIZ, Suzhou, China). Cells were incubated in the suitable medium (RPMI-1640 for LNCaP, DU145; DMEM for CAFs and 293 T) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), 1% penicillin/streptomycin. All cells were cultured at 37 °C with 5% CO2.
Plasmid construction, lentivirus packaging, and cell transfection
Lentiviral plasmids encoding miR-146a-5p or negative control and lentivirus were obtained from Genomeditech (Shanghai, China). To create miR-146a-5p overexpressing LNCaP and DU145 cell lines, we transfected cells with lentivirus according to the manufacturer’s instructions and selected stable cell lines with puromycin.
miR-146a-5p mimic and miR-146a-5p negative-control were purified by RiboBio (Guangzhou, China). The sequences of mimics are as follows: miR-146a-5p mimics: sense: 5’UGAGAACUGAAUUCCAUGGGUU3’, antisense: 5’AACCCAUGGAAUUCAGUUCUCA3’. MiR-NC mimics: sense: 5’UUUGUACUACACAAAAGUACUG3’, antisense: 5’CAGUACUUUUGUGUAGUACAAA3’. EFGR overexpression vector and negative-control plasmids were purchased from Youbio (Changsha, China). Transfections of miRNAs or plasmids were carried out using Lipofectamine 3000 transfection reagent (Invitrogen/Thermo Fisher Scientific) following the manufacturer’s protocol.
Exosomes isolation and characterization
Androgen receptor (AR) signalling in CAFs was activated by adding dihydrotestosterone (DHT, ApexBio Technology, Houston, USA) to 10% charcoal - stripped FBS (CSFBS) DMEM medium at 10 nM [
10]. CAFs were pretreated with 10% CSFBS DMEM medium for 24 h in advance, then CAFs were incubated with freshly medium with 10 nM DHT (simulating the high androgen level of prostate cancer microenvironment) or ethanol (simulating the castration level of prostate cancer microenvironment after ADT) for 48 h. After exposure, CAFs were washed using PBS and cultured in complete medium containing exosome-free CSFBS with 10 nM DHT or ethanol (ETOH) for another 48 h. Exosomes were collected from supernatants of primary CAFs and isolated by ultracentrifugation as previously described [
22]; however, we made some modifications. Briefly, cell culture supernatants were gathered and centrifuged at 300g for 10 min, 2000 ×g for 10 min and 10,000 ×g for 30 min. Then, we filtered the supernatants through 0.22 μm filters (Millipore, USA) and ultracentrifuged at 100,000 ×g for 70 min at 4 °C [
23]. After removing the cell supernatants, we resuspended the pellets with ice-cold PBS. Next, we ultracentrifuged the suspension at 100,000 ×g for another 70 min at 4 °C. Finally, we resuspended exosomes in PBS and stored at −80 °C. We used GW4869 (Sigma Aldrich, St. Louis, USA) to inhibit exosome release at a concentration of 20 μM. We used BCA methods to measure the concentration of exosomes. Exosomes were observed using transmission electron microscopy and identified by the expression of TSG101 and CD81, which are positive exosome markers. We also detected the concentration and hydrodynamic diameter of exosomes through a NanoSight NS300 Nanoparticle Tracking Analyzer (NTA; Malvern Instruments Ltd, UK) equipped with NTA 3·0 analytical software. Nanoparticle Tracking Analyzer is designed to obtain the particle size distribution of the sample in the liquid suspension by using the characteristics of light scattering and Brownian motion. At present, NTA has been recognized as one of the means of determining exosomes characterization in the field of exosomes research [
24,
25].
Immunofluorescence
Cells grown on cover slips were fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde for 15 min at 25 °C, treated with 0.1% Triton X-100 for 5 min at 4 °C, blocked in 5% donkey serum for 2 h at room temperature, and incubated with primary antibodies against α-SMA (Abcam, Cambridge, MA, USA, Cat# ab7817), Vimentin (Abcam, Cat# ab92547), FAP (Abcam, Cat# ab53066) at 4 °C overnight. After that, cells were incubated with an Alexa Fluor 488-conjugated antibodies (Abcam, Cat# ab150109) or an Alexa Fluor 647-conjugated antibodies (Abcam, Cat# ab150075) for 30 min at 25 °C in the dark, and we treated the slips with 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI; Invitrogen, USA) to detect cell nuclei. Cells were observed and pictures were taken by a fluorescence microscope (Leica Microsystems, Germany).
Western blot analysis
Total proteins were prepared, and western blot analysis was performed as previously described [
19]. We used the following primary antibodies: anti-CD81 (Abcam, Cat# ab79559), anti-TSG101 (Abcam, Cat# ab125011), anti-E-cadherin (Cell Signaling Technology, Danvers, MA, USA, Cat# 14472S), anti-Vimentin (Abcam, Cat# ab92547), anti-N-cadherin (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 13116S), anti-MMP-2 (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 40994S), anti-MMP-9 (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 13667T), anti-ZEB1 (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 70512S), anti-Snail (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 3879S), anti-Slug (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 9585S) anti-Twist1 (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 46702S), anti-EGFR (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 4267S), anti-ERK antibody (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 4696S) and anti-p-ERK antibody (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 4370T), anti-androgen receptor (Abcam, Cat# ab74272), anti-β-actin (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 3700S) and anti-GAPDH (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 5174S).
Gelatin zymography
Gelatin zymography was performed as previously described [
26]; however, we made some modifications. Briefly, LNcaP and DU145 cells were incubated with CAFs-derived exosomes or/and transfected with miRNA mimics, then cultured in serum-free medium. Cell culture supernatants were gathered after 24 h and centrifuged at 2000rpm for 10 min. Protein concentration was measured by the BCA method. Samples were mixed with a 2× nonreducing loading buffer and 8% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) containing 1mg/ml gelatin was used to electrophorese. Then we performed the gelatin zymography by using MMP Zymography assay kit (Applygen, P1700, Applygen Technologies Inc, Beijing, China).
Transwell migration and invasion assay
Transwell chambers with 8 μM pore size (Corning, Costar 3464, Corning, NY, USA) were performed to evaluate the migration and invasion ability of LNCaP and DU145 in the presence or absence of CAFs-derived exosomes. LNCaP and DU145 were pretreated with 10% CSFBS DMEM medium for 24 h in advance, and then incubated with CAFs-derived exosomes at a concentration of 25 μg/mL in 10% CSFBS DMEM medium for 48 h as previously described [
27]. For the migration assay, 8×10
4 LNCaP cells or 3×10
4 DU145 cells were mixed in 100 μl of serum-free medium and seeded onto the upper chambers of the Transwell, DMEM medium with 10% CSFBS was placed in the lower chambers. After 48 h, LNCaP and DU145 cells that migrated through the membrane were stained with crystal violet. To assess invasion ability of LNCaP and DU145 cells, Matrigel (BD Biosciences, San Jose, CA, USA) in serum-free medium was added on top of the Transwell membrane and allowed to dry for 1 h at 37 °C. Then 8×10
4 LNCaP cells or 3×10
4 DU145 cells were seeded, after 72 h and 24 h, invading LNCaP and DU145 cells at the Transwell membrane were labelled, respectively.
RNA extraction and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR)
Total RNA of isolated exosomes, cells and tissues were extracted using Trizol (Takara, Japan) reagent following the procedure. Reverse transcription was performed using Prime Script RT reagent Kit (Takara). The real-time PCR was conducted with TB Green TM Premix Ex Taq TM (Takara) on Quant Studio 6 Flex (Applied Biosystems). All procedures above followed standard instructions. We used Bulge-loop™ miRNA qRT-PCR Primer Sets (one RT primer and a pair of qPCR primers for each set) to determine miRNA quantification. Primers and oligos were supplied by RiboBio (Guangzhou, China) and Sangon Biotech (Shanghai, China) and sequences of some primers are listed in Additional file
8: Table S1. The relative expression of mRNA or miRNA was determined using the 2
-ΔΔCt method. All results are representative of three independent experiments. And we used GAPDH as the reference of mRNA and U6 as the reference of miRNA.
miRNA sequencing
Exosomes were isolated from three sets of primary CAFs, total RNA was isolated from exosomes. Library construction, miRNA sequencing, and bioinformatics data analysis were performed by CloudSeq Biotech (Shanghai, China). In brief, the amount and purity of RNA were analysed by a NanoDrop ND-100 (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Only small RNAs of length 20-22 nt were selected to prepare libraries and PCR amplification. Then the products were sequenced via Illumina HiSeq sequencer (Illumina, USA). Differentially expressed miRNAs were analysed by a twofold change and a significant p-value (0.05).
Xenograft models and bioluminescence imaging in vivo
All animal procedures were performed in accordance with the guidelines of laboratory animals and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees of Shanghai General Hospital. 4 to 6-week-old male BALB/c nude mice (Beijing Vital River, Beijing, China) were maintained under specific pathogen-free conditions in the animal centre of Shanghai General Hospital. To evaluate the effect of DHT/ETOH-treated CAFs-derived exosomes on tumour metastasis, the nude mice were divided into 3 groups with 5 mice in each group at random and surgical castration was performed as previously described [
28]. A week later, we performed injections of DU145 luciferase (DU145-Luc) cells. Before tumour cell injection, DU145-Luc cells were pre-incubated with DHT-treated CAFs-derived exosomes (25 μg/mL), ETOH-treated CAFs-derived exosomes (25 μg/mL), or PBS twice a day for 4 days. Then, we injected the indicated cell lines (10
6 cells in 100ul PBS per mouse) through the tail vein. Thereafter, according to a recent study [
29], mice were treated with CAFs-derived exosomes (150μg in 100ul PBS per mouse) or PBS via tail vein injections every other day for 2 weeks. 4 or 8 weeks after the injection of tumour cells, tumour metastasis was observed by a bioluminescence-based in vivo imaging system (IVIS, Caliper Life Science, MA, USA). The mice were anesthetized with 1.5% isoflurane/air and intraperitoneally injected with D-luciferin (200μl at 15mg/ml in PBS) before imaging. Afterward, the mice were sacrificed 8 weeks after tumour injection, we removed the lungs and captured the images. The tumour foci in lungs were collected and quantified, and some metastatic tumours were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde and paraffin-embedded for haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and immunohistochemistry.
Detection of transfer of miR-146a-5p via exosomes in vitro
To examine whether CAFs-derived exosomal miR-146a-5p could be transferred to PCa cells, Cy3-labeled miR-146a-5p or negative control was transfected to CAFs, then we cultured CAFs in complete medium containing exosome-free FBS for 48 h, and the conditioned medium was added to DU145 for 24 h. Then the DU145 cells were fixed for immunofluorescence. Moreover, the cytoskeleton of DU145 was stained with Vimentin and the nuclei were stained with 1 × hoechest 33,342. Finally, fluorescent microscopy was used to detect the green signals (Vimentin) and red fluorescent signals (Cy3-labeled miR-146a-5p) in DU145.
To determine uptake of exosomes, CAFs were transfected with Cy3-labelled miR-146a-5p or negative control for 24 h, followed by washing with PBS and cultured in complete medium containing exosome-free FBS for 48 h. CAFs-derived exosomes were isolated as described above. The exosomes were suspended in freshly medium and added to DU145. After 24 h, DU145 were fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde for further observation.
Dual luciferase reporter assay
Luciferase reporter constructs encoding NC 3’UTR, the wild-type EGFR 3’UTR region, or mutant EGFR 3’UTR region were synthesized by Genomeditech. In brief, 293 T cells were seeded into a 24-well plate, then were co-transfected with luciferase reporter, miR-NC mimics/miR-146a-5p mimics, and Renilla luciferase vector (pRL-TK; Genomeditech) by using HG transgene reagent (Genomeditech). After 48 h, luciferase activities were detected using a Dual-Luciferase Reporter Assay kit (Genomeditech) following the manufacturer’s protocol.
Immunohistochemistry (IHC)
IHC was performed as described previously [
30]. Tissues were embedded in paraffin and IHC was performed using anti-E-cadherin antibody (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 14472S), anti-Vimentin antibody (Abcam, Cat# ab92547), anti-EGFR antibody (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 4267S), anti-ERK antibody (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 4696S) and anti-p-ERK antibody (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 4370T).
Proliferation assay
Cell viability was determined by Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8, Dojindo, Kumamoto, Japan). Cell proliferation was measured by 5-ethynyl-29-deoxyuridine (EdU) assay (RiboBio, Guangzhou, China). For the CCK-8 assay, cells were pretreated with exosomes derived from ETOH-treated CAFs or DHT-treated CAFs for 48 h, then seeded in 96-well plate in triplicate at a concentration of 1000 cells each well, and cells were treated with indicated exosomes or PBS every other day. At different time points, 10 μl CCK-8 solution was added to each well and incubated at 37 °C for 2 h. The absorbance was detected at 450 nm using a microplate reader (Bio-Rad Laboratories). EdU assays were performed to determine the proliferation of LNcaP and DU145 cells after incubation with different exosomes for 48 h according to the protocol.
Statistical analysis
The data were presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD). Statistical analysis was performed using GraphPad Prism 7 software. A two-tailed t-test was used to assess the differences. p < 0.05 indicated a significant difference.
Discussion
Androgen deprivation therapy is the gold standard of care for advanced prostate cancer, but the development to castration-resistant prostate cancer is inevitable, ultimately leads to treatment failure and death. Importantly, recent studies have demonstrated that CAFs, as key components of the tumour microenvironment, contributes to PCa progression and resistance to ADT [
7‐
9]. Furthermore, mounting studies provided new evidence to the roles of CAFs-derived exosomes in cancer progression [
34,
35]. Therefore, the role of exosomes derived from CAFs exposed to ADT needs to be explored. In this paper, we showed that under castration condition, ETOH-treated CAFs-derived exosomes promote EMT, migration and invasion in PCa cells compared with exosomes derived from DHT-treated CAFs both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, we found that after treating with ETOH-treated CAFs-derived exosomes, the expression of miR-146a-5p in cancer cells was markedly decreased than that of cells treated with DHT-treated CAFs-derived exosomes. In addition, our results suggested that overexpression of miR-146a-5p could impair the migration and invasion of PCa cells via targeting EGFR/ERK pathway. Our results confirmed that the downregulation of miR-146a-5p in exosomes derived from CAFs after ADT contributes to the metastasis of PCa cells. Besides, this study suggested that increasing the transfer of miR-146a-5p from CAFs-derived exosomes might become a new strategy to combine with ADT for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer.
Recent data showed that exosomes derived from CAFs have an important role in promoting therapy resistance in many cancer cells. Richards et al. proved that CAFs exposed to gemcitabine therapy significantly upregulate the release of exosomes that enhanced the survival of pancreatic cancer cells [
36]. Qin et al. also demonstrated that in head and neck cancer (HNC), CAFs are innately chemo-resistant and compared with exosomes of CAFs, cisplatin-treated CAFs-derived exosomes dramatically promoted the proliferation and chemoresistance of HNC cells [
19]. By analogy, we hypothesized that exosomes derived from CAFs with or without ADT may have different roles in regulating castration resistance or metastatic progression of PCa cells. Interestingly, we found that compared with DHT-treated CAFs-derived exosomes, ETOH-treated CAFs-derived exosomes significantly promoted the migration and invasion ability of PCa cells after ADT both in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, compared with DHT-treated CAFs-derived exosomes, ETOH-treated CAFs-derived exosomes activated EMT process in PCa cells. Next, we assessed the effect of ADT on exosome release in CAFs. Intriguingly, upon DHT treatment, the size and concentration of exosomes derived from CAFs have no significant difference (Fig.
1d). This finding implied that the component of exosomes derived from CAFs after ADT had changed.
MiRNAs are a type of short non-coding RNAs and are enriched in exosomes released from CAFs. Mounting evidence indicated that CAFs-derived exosomal miR-196a and miR-21 involved in therapy resistance in cancer cells [
19,
20,
37].
Our results indicated that miR-146a-5p could inhibit EMT, cell migration and invasion of PCa cells in vitro. Furthermore, the results confirmed that EGFR is a direct target of miR-146a-5p in PCa cells, which was in accordance with a previous study [
38]. Significantly, CAFs-derived exosomal miR-146a-5p negatively regulated the expression of EGFR in PCa cells both in vitro and in vivo, which suggested that EGFR is also a direct target of exosomal miR-146a-5p in PCa cells. Interestingly, the rescue experiment showed that exosomal miR-146a-5p exhibits its functions by inhibiting EGFR/ERK pathway in PCa cells. Our results and previous studies provide evidence for CAFs-derived exosomal miR-146a-5p as a therapeutic target for PCa.
Although there are important discoveries revealed by this study, our study still has some limitations. First, the underlying mechanism of the reduction of miR-146a-5p in exosomes derived from CAFs after ADT have not been elucidated. Intriguingly, it has been reported that AR signalling may modulate miR-146a-5p via binding to the androgen-response-elements 2 (ARE2) located on the promoter region of miR-146a-5p in hepatocellular carcinoma [
39]. The mechanisms underlying the effect of AR signalling in CAFs on the level of miR-146a-5p in exosomes needed to be further investigated. Second, although we identified miR-146a-5p as the principal molecule that mediated functions of ETOH-treated CAFs-derived exosomes, other 10 significantly changed miRNAs may be involved in this process, we would investigate this in future study. Third, we could not validate the miR-146a-5p-EGFR/ERK signalling axis in metastatic clinical samples because of the availability of the metastasis foci after ADT. Therefore, the clinical significance of the results should be verified further.
Conclusions
The present study demonstrated that exosomes from CAFs after ADT contributes to metastasis of prostate cancer. Mechanistically, loss of exosomal miR-146a-5p from CAFs promotes EMT, migration and invasion of PCa cells through EGFR/ERK signalling pathway. These findings represent a new important molecular mechanism of metastasis in prostate cancer after hormone therapy. Moreover, it suggests that increasing the exosomal transfer of miR-146a-5p from CAFs may present a new strategy to inhibit metastasis for PCa patients receiving ADT.
Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.