Ebp1's effect in prostate cancer

Therapies targeting the androgen receptor are critical for treatment of hormone refractory prostate cancer. We have previously demonstrated that Ebp1, a protein isolated by its ability to bind ErbB3, is a downstream effector of heregulin activated pathways and an AR corepressor. As Ebp1 is decreased in preclinical models of hormone refractory prostate cancer, we studied the ability of Ebp1 to mitigate the hormone refractory phenotype. As we previously found that Ebp1 affected the expression of some androgen receptor target genes, we sought to determine a full spectrum of genes changed using an unbiased appraoch by microarry analysis. A hormone independent cell line C81 was derived from LNCaP cells by long term passage and was a kind gift of Dr. Lin (University of Nebraska). C81 cell were transfected with a vector control or EBP1 expression plasmids and mass cultures selected. RNA was collected from logaritmically growing cultures.