Abstract C130: Plucked human scalp hairs: Potential utility as a surrogate tissue for the assessment of therapies targeting the androgen receptor

Abstract

Abstract Objective: Evaluate whether plucked human scalp or eyebrow hairs obtained from male elderly healthy normal volunteers (HNVs) are suitable for assessing RNA expression patterns linked to the androgen receptor. Procedure: For each of 12 HNV subjects plucked eyebrow and scalp hairs were obtained at 2 time points. For each time point up to three individual anagen hairs were selected for RNA extraction and representative cDNA amplification. For each sample RNA quality was assessed by agarose gel electrophoresis and cDNA quality assessed by qPCR analysis of 3 reference or “housekeeping” genes. Expression levels of a panel of 20 androgen receptor regulated genes were measured by qPCR for samples passing both RNA and cDNA quality criteria. Results : Of the 72 scalp hairs analysed 64 (89 %) passed both RNA and cDNA quality criteria with 23 out of 24 (96%) sample collection points yielding 2 or more analysable hairs. This high success translated into available data for both time points in 11 out of 12 HNVs (92 %). In contrast, for the 72 eyebrow hairs analysed only 2 (3 %) passed RNA quality criteria with none of the collection points yielded 2 or more analysable hairs. Of the 20 test genes qPCR analysis identified a short list of 7 genes with expression levels similar to “housekeeping” genes indicating that they should be reliably detected in the majority of scalp hairs. These results are in keeping with a previous HNV study of younger male and female donors and indicate that plucked scalp hairs may be of value in the early phases of clinical development of androgen receptor based therapies. Citation Information: Mol Cancer Ther 2009;8(12 Suppl):C130.