Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Biol Chem. May 26, 2017; 8(2): 138-150
Published online May 26, 2017. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v8.i2.138
Identification of neuron selective androgen receptor inhibitors
Maya Otto-Duessel, Ben Yi Tew, Steven Vonderfecht, Roger Moore, Jeremy O Jones
Maya Otto-Duessel, Ben Yi Tew, Jeremy O Jones, Department of Cancer Biology, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA 91010, United States
Steven Vonderfecht, Division of Comparative Medicine, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA 91010, United States
Roger Moore, Department of Molecular Immunology, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA 91010, United States
Author contributions: Otto-Duessel M, Tew BY, Vonderfecht S, Moore R and Jones JO designed and performed experiments and wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: No human studies.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the City of Hope (IACUC protocol number: 10009).
Conflict-of-interest statement: No authors have conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: Additional data available from the corresponding author at jjones@coh.org.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Jeremy O Jones, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Cancer Biology, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope National Medical Center, 1500 E Duarte Rd, Beckman 2310, Duarte, CA 91010, United States. jjones@coh.org
Telephone: +1-626-2564673-80270 Fax: +1-626-4713902
Received: February 8, 2017
Peer-review started: February 12, 2017
First decision: March 10, 2017
Revised: April 27, 2017
Accepted: May 3, 2017
Article in press: May 4, 2017
Published online: May 26, 2017
Processing time: 99 Days and 2.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Kennedy’s disease is caused by genetic expansion of the polyglutamine tract in the androgen receptor (AR). There is debate over whether the toxicity is due to expression of this mutant AR in motor neurons, muscle cells, or both. We have identified neuron-specific AR inhibitors, which could be used to help answer this question, and might be useful in the treatment or prevention of Kennedy’s disease. These inhibitors function via FOXM1 and beta-catenin, which are shown to have important roles in the regulation of AR in neurons.