Abstract
In patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), clinical resistances such as androgen receptor (AR) mutation, AR overexpression, and AR splice variants (ARVs) limit the effectiveness of second-generation antiandrogens (SGAs). Several strategies have been implemented to develop novel antiandrogens to circumvent the occurring resistance. Here, we found and identified a bifunctional small molecule Z15, which is both an effective AR antagonist and a selective AR degrader. Z15 could directly interact with the ligand-binding domain (LBD) and activation function-1 region of AR, and promote AR degradation through the proteasome pathway. In vitro and in vivo studies showed that Z15 efficiently suppressed AR, AR mutants and ARVs transcription activity, downregulated mRNA and protein levels of AR downstream target genes, thereby overcoming AR LBD mutations, AR amplification, and ARVs-induced SGAs resistance in CRPC. In conclusion, our data illustrate the synergistic importance of AR antagonism and degradation in advanced prostate cancer treatment.
Data availability
Data Availability: All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting source files. The RNA sequence data could be found in the following link: https://bigd.big.ac.cn/gsa-human/browse/HRA000921. The mass spectrometry proteomics data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE partner repository with the dataset identifier PXD035721. PRIDE - Proteomics Identification Database (ebi.ac.uk).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (22077115,81672559,81311120299)
- Jinming Zhou
National Natural Science Foundation of China (82104231)
- Meng Wu
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M700504)
- Meng Wu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal experiments have been approved by the Ethics Committee of Nanjing Lambda Pharmaceutical Co.,Ltd (Reference number: IACUC-20210902).
Reviewing Editor
- Wafik S El-Deiry, Brown University, United States
Publication history
- Received: May 26, 2021
- Accepted: January 18, 2023
- Accepted Manuscript published: January 19, 2023 (version 1)
Copyright
© 2023, Wu et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Funding: Funding was provided by European Research Council Consolidator Grants OCLD (project no. 681870) and generous gifts from the Nikoh Foundation and the Sam and Rina Frankel Foundation (YN). The interventional study was supported by Abbott (project FENOC0003).
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