Project description:The prostate is one of the main accessory glands of the male reproductive system, responsible of up to 30% of the secretions constituting seminal plasma, and is essential for male fertility. Animal studies have shown that phthalates can trigger cellular events associated with the onset of prostatic diseases. There is increasing interest in developing safe alternative plasticizers to phthalates. Many potential candidates were recently reported, and their mechanisms of action on prostatic cells warrant investigation. The goal of this study was to evaluate the toxicity of four families of chemicals that are candidate plasticizer using a non-cancerous human prostate cell line, PNT1A. These candidate plasticizers were compared to diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), its main bioactive metabolite monohexylethyl phthalate (MEHP), and a current “green” plasticizer that is being used increasingly, 1,2-cyclohexane dicarboxylic acid diisononyl ester (DINCH), using a combination of classical (MTT) and high throughput techniques (HCS, microarray). High content screening provided additional information about cell counts and range of parameters related to cell function. The incorporation of gene expression studies revealed that several of the compounds tested in this study had an effect on cellular functions, even those that had not shown any effect with the other assays. While DINCH was found to have wide ranging effects, we show that candidate plasticizers of the dibenzoate family have no effects on metabolic activity, cellular morphology, cellular proliferation or gene expression in PNT1A cells. Candidate plasticizers of the succinate family had an effect only at the gene expression level.
Project description:The prostate is one of the main accessory glands of the male reproductive system, responsible of up to 30% of the secretions constituting seminal plasma, and is essential for male fertility (Burden et al. 2006 and references therein). Animal studies have shown that phthalates can trigger cellular events associated with the onset of prostatic diseases. There is increasing interest in developing safe alternative plasticizers to phthalates. Many potential candidates were recently reported, and their mechanisms of action on prostatic cells warrant investigation. The goal of this study was to evaluate the toxicity of four families of chemicals that are candidate plasticizer using a non-cancerous human prostate cell line, PNT1A. These candidate plasticizers were compared to diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), its main bioactive metabolite monohexylethyl phthalate (MEHP), and a current “green” plasticizer that is being used increasingly, 1,2-cyclohexane dicarboxylic acid diisononyl ester (DINCH), using a combination of classical (MTT) and high throughput techniques (HCS, microarray). High content screening provided additional information about cell counts and range of parameters related to cell function. The incorporation of gene expression studies revealed that several of the compounds tested in this study had an effect on cellular functions, even those that had not shown any effect with the other assays. While DINCH was found to have wide ranging effects, we show that candidate plasticizers of the dibenzoate family have no effects on metabolic activity, cellular morphology, cellular proliferation or gene expression in PNT1A cells. Candidate plasticizers of the succinate family had an effect only at the gene expression level.
Project description:The prostate is one of the main accessory glands of the male reproductive system, responsible of up to 30% of the secretions constituting seminal plasma, and is essential for male fertility. Animal studies have shown that phthalates can trigger cellular events associated with the onset of prostatic diseases. There is increasing interest in developing safe alternative plasticizers to phthalates. Many potential candidates were recently reported, and their mechanisms of action on prostatic cells warrant investigation. The goal of this study was to evaluate the toxicity of four families of chemicals that are candidate plasticizer using a non-cancerous human prostate cell line, PNT1A. These candidate plasticizers were compared to diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), its main bioactive metabolite monohexylethyl phthalate (MEHP), and a current “green” plasticizer that is being used increasingly, 1,2-cyclohexane dicarboxylic acid diisononyl ester (DINCH), using a combination of classical (MTT) and high throughput techniques (HCS, microarray). High content screening provided additional information about cell counts and range of parameters related to cell function. The incorporation of gene expression studies revealed that several of the compounds tested in this study had an effect on cellular functions, even those that had not shown any effect with the other assays. While DINCH was found to have wide ranging effects, we show that candidate plasticizers of the dibenzoate family have no effects on metabolic activity, cellular morphology, cellular proliferation or gene expression in PNT1A cells. Candidate plasticizers of the succinate family had an effect only at the gene expression level.
Project description:Gene expression profiling reveals a potential role of Green cells (BT-GC) in stimulating hair growth in dermal papilla cells. HFDPCs were human primary cells line, treated with 1:2000 Green cells (BT-GC) for 48 h. Microarray gene expression profiling was conducted for three biological replicates
Project description:Phthalate plasticizers are being phased out of consumer products because of their endocrine disrupting properties. This has resulted in a need to find safe alternatives that can plasticize polyvinyl chloride (PVC) while being inexpensive and biodegradable. We aim to study the toxicogenomic profile of mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP, the active metabolite of bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, DEHP), the commercial plasticizer 1,2-cyclohexane dicarboxylic acid diisononyl ester (DINCH), and three plasticizers in development (1,4 butanediol dibenzoate (BDB), dioctyl succinate (DOS), and dioctyl maleate (DOM)) using the immortalized TM4 Sertoli cell line.
Project description:Upon androgen stimulation, PKN1-mediated histone H3 threonine 11 phosphorylation (H3T11P) promotes AR target genes activation. However, the underlying mechanism is not completely understood. Here, we show that WDR5, a subunit of the SET1/MLL complex, interacts with H3T11P and this interaction facilitates the recruitment of the SET1/MLL complex and subsequent H3K4 trimethylation (H3K4me3). Using ChIP-seq, we find that androgen stimulation results in a six-fold increase in the number of H3T11P-marked regions and induces WDR5 colocalization to one third of H3T11P-enriched promoters, thus establishing a genome-wide relationship between H3T11P and recruitment of WDR5. Accordingly, PKN1 knock-down or chemical inhibition severely blocks WDR5 association and H3K4me3 on AR target genes. Finally, WDR5 is critical in prostate cancer cell proliferation, and is hyperexpressed in human prostate cancers. Together, these results identify WDR5 as a critical epigenomic integrator of histone phosphorylation and methylation and a major driver of androgen-dependent prostate cancer cell proliferation. Identification of Histone 3 threonine 11 phosphorylation (H3T11P) marks and WDR5 binding sites in LNCaP cells treated with R1881 ligand (androgen) or solvent control.
Project description:Upon androgen stimulation, PKN1-mediated histone H3 threonine 11 phosphorylation (H3T11P) promotes AR target genes activation. However, the underlying mechanism is not completely understood. Here, we show that WDR5, a subunit of the SET1/MLL complex, interacts with H3T11P and this interaction facilitates the recruitment of the SET1/MLL complex and subsequent H3K4 trimethylation (H3K4me3). Using ChIP-seq, we find that androgen stimulation results in a six-fold increase in the number of H3T11P-marked regions and induces WDR5 colocalization to one third of H3T11P-enriched promoters, thus establishing a genome-wide relationship between H3T11P and recruitment of WDR5. Accordingly, PKN1 knock-down or chemical inhibition severely blocks WDR5 association and H3K4me3 on AR target genes. Finally, WDR5 is critical in prostate cancer cell proliferation, and is hyperexpressed in human prostate cancers. Together, these results identify WDR5 as a critical epigenomic integrator of histone phosphorylation and methylation and a major driver of androgen-dependent prostate cancer cell proliferation.