To clarify the clinical relevance of HSD3B2 expression in prostate cancer, we analyzed HSD3B2 protein expression by immunohistochemistry on our preexisting tissue microarray with 12.247 annotated cancers.
Curcumin decreased the expression of steroidogenic acute regulatory proteins, CYP11A1 and HSD3B2 in prostate cancer cell lines, supporting the decrease of testosterone production.
In Caucasians, the HSD3B2 (TG)n,(TA)n,(CA)n intron 3 length polymorphism is associated with both prostate cancer risk and aggressiveness and the SRD5A2 V89L polymorphism may modify the risk conferred by this polymorphism.
To evaluate the possible role of HSD3B genes in prostate cancer, we screened a panel of DNA samples collected from 96 men with or without prostate cancer for sequence variants in the putative promoter region, exons, exon-intron junctions, and 3'-untranslated region of HSD3B1 and HSD3B2 genes by direct sequencing.
We hypothesize that allelic variants of the HSD3B2 gene may play a role in predisposition to prostate cancer, and in explaining the substantial racial/ethnic variation in risk.