Fig. 5.

Acquired pluripotent pathways drive castration-resistant prostate cancer independent of conventional AR signalling. a Diagram illustrating the exons of the androgen receptor (AR) and variants (AR-Vs) that siEX1, siEX7 and siCE3 target. NTD, N-terminal domain; DBD, DNA-binding domain; LBD, ligand-binding domain; CE, Cryptic exon. b Expression of AR was measured by qPCR following knockdown of AR-FL (siEX7), AR-V7 (siCE3) and all AR (siEX1) in CWR22Rv1 cells cultured in FM, SDM and APSCE. Data is represented as fold change of siCTRL experimental arm. Data represents at least three independent experiments ± SEM. c Same as in b but measurement of AR-V7 expression. d Same as in c but measurement of PSA expression (*denotes p-value < 0.05). e Same as in c but measurement of KLK2 expression. f Resultant lysates from samples in b, c, d and e were subjected to western blot analysis to measure AR and PSA expression. AR-N20 antibody was used to detect both AR-FL and AR-Vs and α-tubulin was used as loading control