Figure 1.

Steroid hormone imbalance promotes gene expression signatures related to inflammation and tissue remodeling in the mouse ventral prostate. Mice were implanted with testosterone and estradiol pellets or received sham surgery and were necropsied 14 days later (A). The NanoString RNA expression technology was used with a mouse fibrotic panel to analyze expressional changes in the ventral prostate lobes of T+E2 mice after two weeks of treatment. Top ten pathways altered by steroid hormone imbalance included extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling and oxidative stress amongst inflammatory pathways (B). Top 15 genes were identified by Volcano Plot analysis using VolcaNoseR (C). Selected genes are also depicted in (D) grouped as follows: top three genes, (dark purple), inflammatory genes/immune cell markers (violet) and extracellular matrix-associated genes (teal, D). Immune cell analysis performed on nCounter Advanced Analysis Software shows the dominance of macrophages in steroid hormone imbalance (E). Heatmap was prepared from the average of cell type scores calculated by the Software. Analysis was performed from three sham and three T+E2 ventral prostates. *: p ≤ 0.05, **: p ≤ 0.01, ***: p ≤ 0.001.