News Finding: "We believe that BPA actually reprograms the stem cells to be more sensitive to estrogen throughout life, leading to a life-long increased susceptibility to diseases including cancer," Prins said.
Paper Finding: This implicates BPA exposure as a potential initiating event in human prostate stem-like cells, one that enables promotion by rising estrogens later in life, as occurs in aging men .
News Context: Prins found that a third of tissue samples taken from mice fed BPA had either pre-cancerous lesions or prostate cancer, compared to only 12 percent in a control group of mice fed oil. If the prostate stem cells were exposed to BPA before implantation and again as they produced prostate tissue in the mice, 45 percent of the tissue samples had pre-cancerous lesions or cancer. "We believe that BPA actually reprograms the stem cells to be more sensitive to estrogen throughout life, leading to a life-long increased susceptibility to diseases including cancer," Prins said.
Paper Context: It is important to emphasize that the stem cells in the present study were cultured from disease-free prostates of young organ donors making it unlikely that the cells had prior initiating events. This implicates BPA exposure as a potential initiating event in human prostate stem-like cells, one that enables promotion by rising estrogens later in life, as occurs in aging men . This is similar to our previous findings in a rat model (23, 24) and provides strong evidence that these earlier rodent data are directly relevant to the human disease.