Recent clinicopathologic studies have shown that many prostatic adenonomas express focal neuroendocrine differentiation and that neuroendocrine differentiation is most apparent in advanced anaplastic tumors. While studying growth-regulatory signal nsduction events in human prostate carcinoma cell lines, we found that in two of four cell lines, the androgen-sensitive line LNCaP and the highly metastatic androgen-independent line PC-3-M, elevation of cAMP through addition of cAMP analogues or phosphodiesterase inhibitors induced a markediy neuronal morphology. Also in LNCaP cells ultrtructural analysis showed that cAMP induced the appearance of neurosecretory cell-like dense-core granules. Phenotypic analysis of untreated LNCaP and PC-3-M cells showed that both cell lines express markers of the neural crest incuding S-100, chromogranin A, pp60 , and neuron-specific enolase as well as the epithelial marker KS1/4 and stage-specific embryonic antigen 4. In PC-3-M cells, cAMP markedly elevated neuron-specific enolase protein and caused an increase in the specific activity of the neuroendocrine marker ppWw, and in both cell lines expression ofKS1/4 and stage-specific embryonic antigen 4 was down-regulated. In addiion to effects on lineage markers, cAMP treatment induced GI synchronization, growth arrest, and loss of clonogenicity, indicating terminal differentiation. Our data provide direct evidence of plastic in the lineag commitment of adenocarcinoma of the prostate. We have shown that cellpermeant cAMP analogue can induce terminal differentiation, suggesting that hydrolysis-resistant cyclic nucleotides may present an additional approach to the treatment of advanced prostate cancer.In an effort to develop new anticancer drugs directed at unique aspects of prostate cancer biology, we have been studying the signal transduction pathways regulating the growth of human prostate adenocarcinoma cells in vitro. As reported previously, we found that addition of dibutyryl (db) cAMP to the androgen-independent prostate carcinoma cell line PC-3 causes induction of type (32 transforming growth factor (TGF-g32) mRNA, production of bioactive TGF-P2, and growth arrest (1).We have subsequently studied the effect of cAMP derivatives and phosphodiesterase inhibitors on the other two commonly available prostate carcinoma cell lines, DU 145 and LNCaP, as well as the highly metastatic variant of PC-3, PC-3-M, and found that all lines were growth inhibited by elevation of intracellular cAMP (data not shown). Data presented here demonstrate that in two ofthese lines, LNCaP and PC-3-M, elevation of intracellular cAMP induces permanent conversion from an epithelial to a neuronal morphology and that these cells express markers of the neuroendocrine phenotype. These data suggest that these cell lines, which are derived from metastatic adenocarcinoma of the prostate, contain or consist of multipotent cells capable of both neuroendocrine and epithelial differentiation.

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After insemination, a large number of leukocytes migrate into the uterus, which is accompanied by intense inflammation. However, the details of how seminal plasma interacts with the uterus are still not very clear. Here, we present that neutrophils migrate and accumulate around the uterine epithelium following insemination, which is accompanied by an increase in interleukin (IL) 17A levels. Additionally, we find that γδ T cells are the major source of IL-17A, and the seminal plasma could induce the γδ T cells to secret IL-17A. Blocking IL-17A could reduce the number of neutrophils in the uterus and prevent them from migrating to the epithelium by decreasing the chemokines CXCL1, CXCL2 and CXCL5. Blocking IL-17A did not affect the Th1/Th2 balance but actually diminished the inflammation in the uterus by reducing the expression of IL-1β and TNF-α. In summary, we found a new mechanism by which seminal plasma could influence the inflammation in the uterus through the γδ T/IL-17 pathway to regulate the expression of various chemokines and cytokines.