News Finding: 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.
Paper Finding: That these malignant lesions arose from normal prostate epithelium in the relatively short time frame of 2-4 months, as compared to decades in humans, is particularly noteworthy and highlights the potent nature of this EDC on augmenting carcinogenic susceptibility.
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: This carcinogenic rate further increased to 45% when developmental BPA exposure was extended to in vitro stem cell cultures, implicating the stem-progenitor cells as the direct BPA targets, a hypothesis supported by the in vitro studies discussed above. That these malignant lesions arose from normal prostate epithelium in the relatively short time frame of 2-4 months, as compared to decades in humans, is particularly noteworthy and highlights the potent nature of this EDC on augmenting carcinogenic susceptibility. 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.