Wnt signaling prevents prostatic epithelial cell differentiation. (A,B,C) p63 immunocytochemistry (red) of the P2 rat ventral prostate organ cultures maintained for 7 days in the absence (A) or presence of 50 nM of Wnt3a (B) or 400 nM of DKK1 (C).
<p>The tissue sections were counterstained with DAPI (blue). While p63 positive cells (purple) represent basal cells where progenitor cells reside, the blue cells (arrows) that are negative to p63 in the epithelium are differentiated luminal cells. (D) Quantification of p63 positive cells over total epithelial cells. Data were collected from randomly selected 22–27 ductal units from sections of the organ cultures per group and are expressed as mean + SEM (t-test). Note that while Wnt3a led to a significant increase in the number of basal cells, DKK1 resulted in a reduction in basal cells. Bar, 50 µm for A-C.</p
