Role Of Androgen Receptor Splice Variants Research Articles

Androgen receptor splice variants drive castration-resistant prostate cancer metastasis by activating distinct transcriptional programs.

One critical mechanism through which prostate cancer (PCa) adapts to treatments targeting androgen receptor (AR) signaling is the emergence of ligand-binding domain-truncated and constitutively active AR splice variants, particularly AR-V7. While AR-V7 has been intensively studied, its ability to activate distinct biological functions compared with the full-length AR (AR-FL), and its role in regulating the metastatic progression of castration-resistant PCa (CRPC), remain unclear. Our study found that, under castrated conditions, AR-V7 strongly induced osteoblastic bone lesions, a response not observed with AR-FL overexpression. Through combined ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, and RNA-seq analyses, we demonstrated that AR-V7 uniquely accesses the androgen-responsive elements in compact chromatin regions, activating a distinct transcription program. This program was highly enriched for genes involved in epithelial-mesenchymal transition and metastasis. Notably, we discovered that SOX9, a critical metastasis driver gene, was a direct target and downstream effector of AR-V7. Its protein expression was dramatically upregulated in AR-V7-induced bone lesions. Moreover, we found that Ser81 phosphorylation enhanced AR-V7's pro-metastasis function by selectively altering its specific transcription program. Blocking this phosphorylation with CDK9 inhibitors impaired the AR-V7-mediated metastasis program. Overall, our study has provided molecular insights into the role of AR splice variants in driving the metastatic progression of CRPC.

The role of androgen receptor splice variants in prostate cancer development

Prostate cancer is a common malignancy in men. Most patients with prostate cancer who underwent androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for 1-2 years will develop into castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), and the prognosis is poor. But the mechanism of CRPC progression is unclear. The androgen receptor (AR) is a key factor in the development of prostate cancer. A possible mechanism for the formation of castration resistance is that AR splice variants (AR-Vs) continuously activate AR target genes independently of androgen. In this paper, we perform a review of the research concerning the role of AR-Vs in the development of prostate cancer. Key words: Prostate cancer; Androgen receptor splice variants; Castration resistance

Decoding the androgen receptor splice variants.

In the past five years, multiple structurally and functionally distinct androgen receptor (AR) splice variants have been decoded and characterized. The mature transcripts for the majority of the fully decoded AR splice variants contain a transcribed “intronic” sequence, capable of encoding a short variant-specific peptide to replace the AR ligand-binding domain (LBD). Functionally, AR splice variants represent a diverse group of molecules often demonstrating cell context-specific genomic functions that may or may not be coupled with the functions of the canonical full-length AR (AR-FL). However, the full spectrum of their functional diversity and the underlying mechanistic basis remains very poorly characterized. In clinical specimens derived from men treated with a variety of hormone therapy regimens, AR splice variants are almost always expressed at detectable, yet lower levels when compared to that of AR-FL. In spite of the collective in vitro data supporting the putative role of AR splice variants in therapeutic resistance to hormone therapies, the extent to which AR splice variants mediate resistance to each individual regimen is not known and awaits thorough investigations in a clinically relevant setting using specimens from men undergoing treatments. Among the AR splice variants, AR-V7 is more abundantly and frequently expressed in castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) and remains the most important variant identified so far. The relative importance of different AR molecules, including AR-FL, should be functionally dissected in the setting of castration-resistant prostate cancer, particularly in tumors resistant to more potent inhibitors of AR-FL recently approved by the FDA. In this review, we will focus on the discovery and characterization of AR splice variants, their putative functions and roles in mediating constitutively active AR signaling, and key areas of investigation that are necessary to establish their clinical relevance.