Gene expression profiling of the androgen independent prostate cancer cells demonstrates complex mechanisms mediating resistance to docetaxel.

The molecular mechanisms conferring resistance to docetaxel in prostate cancer patients remain partially understood. We generated docetaxel resistant derivatives of the androgen independent prostate cancer cell lines PC-3 and DU-145. Docetaxel rapidly induces DU-145 cell death via apoptosis and the drug resistant cells were produced by periodically exposing proliferating DU-145 cultures to small doses of docetaxel. In PC-3 cells docetaxel induces delayed cell death via mitotic catastrophe evident by profound multinucleation and formation of giant cells. Mononucleated progeny of the giant PC-3 cells shows significant resistance to docetaxel. Gene expression profiling of these docetaxel resistant PC-3 cells revealed sets of docetaxel inducible and constitutively expressed genes associated with major cancer pathways. A contradictory overlap with DU-145 docetaxel resistant cells was also found. Analyses suggested significant changes associated with apoptotic function, DNA repair, cell growth, survival and proliferation, metabolism, maintenance of cytoskeleton and extracellular matrix formation. These cellular processes often contribute to drug resistance and our study identified a set of genes managing this phenotype. Additional analyses of the drug resistant PC-3 cells using shRNA constructs determined direct relevance of Cyclin G2 to docetaxel resistance as well as prevention of multinucleation, whereas the knockdown of upregulated CYP1B1 showed no effect on either of these processes. Downregulated GBP1 was explored by ectopic overexpression and even though GBP1 has a potential to mediate resistance to docetaxel, it was not utilized in PC-3 cells. The results suggest complex combination of gene expression pattern changes that enables resistance to docetaxel while preventing death via multinucleation.