Abstract 4802: Identification of critical hypoxia induced factors in castrate resistant prostate cancer
Authors: Osagie Oloruntoba I. , Smakk Jordann , Citrin Deborah E. , Stracker Travis H. 
Published: April 2023

Background: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most diagnosed cancer in men and the second cause of cancer-related death amongst men worldwide. PCa is a heterogeneous disease, and the outcome is worse for patients when the disease progresses from localized PCa to a castrate-resistant disease. Androgen receptor (AR) signaling is crucial for PCa development and has been a major therapeutic target for decades. Despite the success made with hormone therapy to block AR signaling, castration resistant disease can arise through mutations and amplifications of the androgen receptor (AR) and AR splice variants (AR-Vs). Amongst them, AR-V7 and AR-V12 can promote AR signaling independent of androgen. Furthermore, prostate tumors are highly hypoxic due to abnormal tumor vasculature. Hypoxia influences the efficacy of local and systemic treatment strategies, such as radiotherapy, hormone therapy, and chemotherapy, resulting in poorer clinical outcomes for PCa patients. Therefore, a complete understanding of AR and AR variant function, as well as how they are modulated by hypoxia and therapy is warranted for developing new strategies to treat PCa.

Methods: To identify the transcriptional apparatus associated with the AR and its variants under normal and hypoxic conditions, we carried out Bio-ID proximity labeling mass spectrometry (BioID-MS). We generated stable androgen-independent human prostate cancer cell lines, PC-3 and DU145, expressing AR and the AR-V7 and AR-V12 variants fused to a MiniTurboID (MTID) enzyme. To delineate the AR proximal interaction network, we treated cells with androgen or vehicle for 3 hours and affinity-purified biotinylated proteins after the addition of biotin for the final 2 hours. Cells were grown in normoxia (20% O2) or treated with hypoxia (95% N2,5% CO2 and 0.5% O2) for 24 h. Nonspecific interactions were filtered using controls and statistical methods to identify high-confidence interactomes.

Results: BioID proximity labeling in PC3 cells identified several AR-associated proteins, including many knowninteractors, validating the approach. Hypoxic conditions led to a striking alteration in proximal interactions and many metabolic proteins were highly enriched with AR upon exposure of cells to hypoxia for 24h. Among these, phosphoglycerate kinase 1 (PGK1) was a top hit. PGK1 has been reported to interact with AR to mediate the expression of genes that regulates cell proliferation and apoptosis. Additionally, PGK1 has an essential role in metabolic reprogramming induced by c-MYC and HIF-1α, leading to enhanced tumorigenesis.

Conclusion: Bio-ID mass spectrometry was used to map the proximal interactome of AR and its variants, identifying novel interactions partners for further analysis. We found that hypoxia strongly alters interactors with the AR, and we identified PGK1 as a hypoxia induced AR interaction in PCA. Current work to functionally validate this interaction will be presented.

Citation Format: Oloruntoba I. Osagie, Jordann Smakk, Deborah E. Citrin, Travis H. Stracker. Identification of critical hypoxia induced factors in castrate resistant prostate cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 4802.