New research suggests that targeting the androgen receptor (AR) might be worth looking at to treat kidney cancer. The work comes from the University of Rochester Medical Center and was published last week in Nature Communications.
Chawnshang Chang, Ph.D., the senior author, has produced a large body of work that links cancer and the AR, which binds male hormones, transcribes DNA, and is critical for male sex characteristics. Chang's previous research has shown that AR has different role's in different cancer. For example, AR signaling can enhance bladder cancer cell invasion but will actually suppress prostate cancer cell invasion.
The team looked at epidemiology data from 4,000 cases of kidney cancer in China and found that males were about three times more likely to get kidney cancer than females. And among those whose cancer spread to the lungs within 12 months, the male-to-female ratio jumped to nearly five to one. In contrast, the gender differences were less striking from those patients whose cancer spread to lymph nodes versus to the pulmonary system. This could be because the cancer cells contained fewer ARs.
They then took the next step and looked at human cells and tissues to understand the signaling mechanisms between the AR proteins and other cancer-associated genes.
"In kidney cancer, many studies have provided conflicting information," Chang said. "In some cases, AR expression has been associated with less malignancy. We were able to begin to sort out AR's function in this one disease, showing that AR-positive kidney tumors are more likely to spread to the lungs and AR-negative tumors are more likely to spread to the lymph nodes."
Chang believes this research may help with developing newer approaches to treatment that could combine anti-androgens when appropriate with other targeted drugs already being used, to suppress the disease long-term.
Image: A new study is believed to be the first to describe the unique role of androgens in kidney cancer, and it suggests that a new approach to treatment, targeting the androgen receptor, is worth further investigation. The study shows that in renal cell carcinoma androgen signaling can either stimulate or suppress tumor cells' movement and invasion to different locations in the body. Image courtesy of the University of Rochester Medical Center.