Combination of the NRF2 Inhibitor and Autophagy Inhibitor Significantly Inhibited Tumorigenicity of Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most frequent cancer in men. Developing new treatment methods for CRPC will be a significant challenge in the clinical treatment of PCa. In conclusion, the results of this study show that NRF2 is downregulated in untreated PCa samples compared to normal PCa samples; however, it was upregulated in mCRPC samples compared to HSPC samples. These results demonstrated that NRF2 may serve as a tumor suppressor in tumorigenesis but promote PCa androgen-independent transferring after ADT treatment. Bioinformatics analysis showed that NRF2 was related to multiple signaling, such as the AGE-RAGE pathway, MAPK pathway, NF-kappa B signaling, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, and VEGF signaling pathway. Moreover, we revealed that the NRF2 inhibitor significantly inhibited tumorigenicity of CRPC cells in vitro. Of note, combination of the NRF2 inhibitor and autophagy inhibitor had a more significantly suppressive role than either ML385 or CQ, indicating that combination of CQ (autophagy inhibitor) and ML385 (NRF2 inhibitor) is a potential treatment of CRPC. Finally, we conformed that high levels of autophagy regulators LC3B, ULK1, and beclin1 significantly correlated to longer PSA recurrence-free survival time. We think that this study could provide more evidence to confirm that NRF2 is a crucial regulator and targeting NRF2 and autophagy is a potential therapy option for CRPC.