Identification of Wnt/beta-catenin signal pathway in human prostate cancer cell lines and its significance

Objective: To determine the Wnt/beta-catenin signal pathway in different human prostate cancer cell lines and explore its role in epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in human prostate cancer.

Methods: We detected the expressions of beta-catenin, t-GSK3beta and p-GSK3beta in several prostate cancer cell lines (LNCaP, C4, C4-2, C4-2B, IF11, IA8, PC-3 and DU145) with different characteristics of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by Western blotting.

Results: There were remarkable differences in the expressions of beta-catenin and p-GSK3beta among the cell lines, with beta-catenin and p-GSK3beta highly expressed in LNCaP, C4, C4-2, C4-2B, IF11 and IA8, lowly expressed in PC-3 and DU145, but no difference was observed in the expressions of t-GSK3beta in all the cell lines.

Conclusions: There are differences in the state of the Wnt/beta-catenin signal pathway among the cell lines with different characters of EMT.