Cell kinetics of prostate exocrine and neuroendocrine epithelium and their differential interrelationship: New perspectives

Semiquantitative morphology of human prostatic development and regional distribution of prostatic neuroendocrine cells

“…They found the NE cell density remaining constant in acini/ducts of the normal prostate from fetuses to young adulthood, with a low number in peripheral tips of the gland. Intermediate``amphicrine'' forms, however, coexpressing neuronal and secretory or basal cell markers (as have been described by Xue et al [5]) have never been encountered in our specimens.…”

“…There are several reports that the number of NE cells vary slightly, when different immunohistochemical markers are used, e.g., chromogranin A, serotonin (Verhofstad et al, unpublished results cited in [5]), neuron-speci®c enolase, calcitonin, monoamine transporter 1 (Weihe and Aumu È ller, unpublished observations), and different neuropeptides. A still unresolved question therefore is, if one of the markers mentioned is able to detect all NE cells within a given tissue, which marker would this be (a detailed account of this issue will be published elsewhere).…”

“…Recent stem cell hypotheses suggested by Bonkhoff and coauthors [8,11,12] and Xue and colleagues [5] propose an undifferentiated pluripotent progenitor for all prostatic epithelial cells, residing presumably in the basal compartment. They however, do not provide an explanation, of the fact that (i) the appearance and maturation of these cells precede that of the secretory cells by around 15 years, (ii) the number of prostatic NE cells is signi®cantly lower than that of the secretory and basal cells, (iii) their distribution pattern within the prostate is extremely asymmetric with high numbers in the collicular and very low numbers in the subcapsular portion of the gland, and ®nally (iv) their number throughout development is rather stable, whereas that of the basal and secretory cells increases strongly during puberty.…”

“…It is dif®cult to reconcile the neurogenic origin of prostatic NE cells with recently developed hypotheses on prostatic stem cells [5,12,13] which were suggested to represent the precursors of all prostatic epithelial cells, including the NE cells. Findings in prostate cancer prompted Bonkhoff and Remberger [12] to propose an in situ development of prostatic endocrine cells from undifferentiated progenitor cells.…”

Immunohistochemical Localization of Protein Gene Product 9.5, Ubiquitin, and Neuropeptide Y Immunoreactivities in Epithelial and Neuroendocrine Cells from Normal and Hyperplastic Human Prostate

“…Some of the findings described in the present work could have relevance to normal or pathological function of the prostate. For example, (a) although some authors (Aumüller et al 1999) have recently postulated a neurogenic origin of human prostate neuroendocrine cells, based on histogenetic studies in human embryos, other authors (Xue et al 1997(Xue et al ,1998 have reported that neuroendocrine and epithelial (basal and secretory) cells in the human prostate share a common keratin phenotype and that both probably originate from a common epithelial precursor. In addition, the frequent observation of neuroendocrine differentiation in prostate adenocarcinoma represents the differentiation repertoire of local stem cells (Bonkhoff 1998).…”