Study on the mechanism of miR-361-5p regulation of androgen receptor in castration-resistant transformation of prostate cancer

Abstract Prostate cancer has become one of the most common tumors endangering men's health. At present, the main clinical treatments for prostate tumors are surgery, radiotherapy, endocrine therapy, chemotherapy, etc. However, due to drug resistance, the treatment effect of prostate cancer is not good, and the expression of androgen receptor (AR) and its protein structure changes play a crucial role in the resistance of prostate cancer. The expression of androgen receptor (AR) and changes in its protein structure play a crucial role in prostate cancer drug resistance. Non-coding RNAs, especially miRNAs, are involved in post-transcriptional regulation of genes and play an important role in the development of tumor cells, and may be used as specific substances to assist in the treatment of cancer. Our previous study showed that miR-361-5p expression was down-regulated in prostate cancer and that overexpression of miR-361-5p inhibited the proliferation, migration and promoted apoptosis of castration-resistant prostate cancer cells, DU145 and PC3, however, the mechanism through which miR-361-5p affects the progression of prostate cancer is unknown. We found that miR-361-5p could target binding to androgen receptor (AR) and play a role in the transformation of hormone-sensitive prostate cancer cells (LNCAP) to castration-resistant prostate cancer cells (LNCAP-AI), which inhibited proliferation, migration and promoted apoptosis of prostate cancer cells. Therefore, we suggest that miR-361-5p can target AR and inhibit the rapid growth of AR in the early stage of transformation, thus inhibiting the transformation of prostate cancer cells to castration-resistant.