Androgen receptor plays a pivotal role in prostate cancer progression, and androgen deprivation therapy to intercept androgen receptor signal pathway is an indispensable treatment for most advanced prostate cancer patients to delay cancer progression. However, the emerging of castration-resistant prostate cancer reminds us the alteration of androgen receptor, which includes androgen receptor mutation, the formation of androgen receptor variants, and androgen receptor distribution in cancer cells. In this review, we introduce the process of androgen receptor and also its variants' formation, translocation, and function alteration by protein modification or interaction with other pathways. We dissect the roles of androgen receptor in prostate cancer from molecular perspective to provide clues for battling prostate cancer, especially castration-resistant prostate cancer.
Tumour biology : the journal of the International Society for Oncodevelopmental Biology and Medicine. 2017 May [Epub]
Jieping Hu, Gongxian Wang, Ting Sun
Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, China.