The ability to prevent and effectively treat benign and malignant diseases of the prostate requires defining specific factors that initiate, promote, and maintain prostatic growth. Our laborartory has been focusing on the regulation of prostatic growth and characterizing it in the human fetus. The development of the human fetal prostate is an androgen-dependent event possibly mediated by growth factor that are elaborated by the prostatic mesenchyme. Our current projects include investigation the biology of prostatic growth regulation at the molecular, cellular, and organ level to demonstrate that: 1) the proliferative activity of the human prostate is intense during fetal development; 2) the fetal prostate is primarily mesenchyme and the mesenchyme induces glandular formation; 3) fetal proliferation of the human prostate is characterized by temporal and cellular compartmental expression of growth factors and their receptors; and 4) steriod hormone receptors are expressed by the mesenchyme during fetal development of the prostate.

Using double immunoenzymatic staining and color-assisted computer image analysis, techniques we develooped, we examine fetal prostates histologically to determine the cellular composition. We than examine the macroscopoic interactions between the mesenchyme and epithelium using three-dimensional reconstruction to investigate: the interrelationships between prostatic growth, cellular proliferative activity, cellular composition, the expression of growth factors, and steriod receptors implications related to the regulation of prostatic growth and, ultimately, the regulation of prostatic diseases.