(ETS) Family Factors: Role and Cooperative Interactions in Prostate Cancer

In humans, the ETS family of transcription factors consists of 27 members that contain a highly conserved DNA binding domain. Members of this family are involved in many biological processes in both normal and neoplastic cells and the expression profile of the ETS family is well studied. Reported differences in the expression of ETS family members using different cell lines seems to reflect specific cellular characteristics of particular prostate cancer cell lines.Differential expression of ETS family members in prostate cancer tissues and androgen-sensitive and insensitive prostate cancer cell lines showed that ETS-1 regulates five family members in PC3 cells ELf-1, Elf-2, Elk-1, Etv-5 and Spi-1using Ets-1 blocked. In the current study, we tried to knockdown the ETS family members ETS-1 and ETS-2 in PC3 and DU-145 prostate cancer cell lines, respectively using shRNA plasmids in an attempt to achieve a stable knockdown. Transfection of both cell lines was successful as indicated by green Fluorescence. Data analysis of the qRT-PCR results for ETS -1 indicate that knock- down of this gene was not possible. It seems reasonable to assume that the knock- down of this gene was not possible due to their involvement in the RNAi pathway, feedback mechanisms, or other experimental components may need to be optimization (e.g. shRNA plasmid concentrations). Knock- down of ETS-2 gene was successful; however, the gene was only transiently expressed. The next priority is creating a stable cell line in order to study biological properties of transfected cells such as migration, invasion, and proliferation of the cancer cells.