On July 29, 2010 UCLA researchers announced that they have identified the prostate cell that mutates into prostate cancer.
It was previously believed that prostate tumors were mutated luminal cells. (Luminal cells line the prostate tubules.)
Immunologist Owen Witte of UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and his colleagues have discovered that, contrary to the generally accepted hypothesis of luminal cell origin (prostate cancer cells resemble lumen cells) the mutations occur in basal cells which line the outside of the prostate tubules. (Lumen ducts excrete prostate fluid from the prostate gland into the ejaculatory ducts.)
Owen and his team had originally developed a series of surface markers that allowed them to readily distinguish basal cells from luminal cells. They then showed that, in mice injected with human basal prostate cells, it is the basal cells that produce tumors.
These results were reported in the journal, Science.
A Ph.D student of Witte’s, Andrew Goldstein, is the lead author of the paper.
