The effects of
sarcosine on the processes driving
prostate cancer (PCa) development remain still unclear. Herein, we show that a supplementation of metastatic PCa cells (
androgen independent PC-3 and
androgen dependent LNCaP) with
sarcosine stimulates cells proliferation in vitro. Similar stimulatory effects were observed also in PCa murine xenografts, in which
sarcosine treatment induced a
tumor growth and significantly reduced weight of treated mice (p < 0.05). Determination of
sarcosine metabolism-related
amino acids and
enzymes within
tumor mass revealed significantly increased
glycine,
serine and
sarcosine concentrations
after treatment accompanied with the increased amount of
sarcosine dehydrogenase. In both
tumor types,
dimethylglycine and
glycine-N-methyltransferase were affected slightly, only. To identify the effects of
sarcosine treatment on the expression of genes involved in any aspect of
cancer development, we further investigated expression profiles of excised
tumors using
cDNA electrochemical microarray followed by validation using the semi-quantitative PCR. We found 25 differentially expressed genes in PC-3, 32 in LNCaP
tumors and 18 overlapping genes. Bioinformatical processing revealed strong
sarcosine-related induction of genes involved particularly in a cell cycle progression. Our exploratory study demonstrates that
sarcosine stimulates PCa metastatic cells irrespectively of
androgen dependence. Overall, the obtained data provides valuable information towards understanding the role of
sarcosine in PCa progression and adds another piece of puzzle into a picture of
sarcosine oncometabolic potential.