Erik Goodwyn | University of Louisville, KY (original) (raw)

Papers by Erik Goodwyn

Psychoanalysis and the Mind-Body Problem, 2022

Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 2020

Though the clinical and experimental literature suggests that discussing dreams with therapy pati... more Though the clinical and experimental literature suggests that discussing dreams with therapy patients can be beneficial in a variety of important ways, there appears to be a gap in educational opportunities for psychiatric residents regarding this process. To address this educational need at the authors' residency program, a class in psychodynamically oriented dream analysis was implemented, and data was collected in the form of learner surveys both before and after they took the course. The survey found that the level of importance placed on dream work, the comfort level in discussing dreams with patients, and the frequency with which dreams were discussed in sessions were all increased after taking the course. Our conclusion was that these preliminary results suggest that implementing a structured course on dream analysis may help to fill the educational gap.

The Journal of analytical psychology, 2021

International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2021

This paper follows the ongoing discussion with philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills (2020) reg... more This paper follows the ongoing discussion with philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills (2020) regarding the nature, origin, and essence of the archetype and psyche, in which my approach that incorporates key features of the philosophy of mind is being compared and contrasted with Mills’ onto-phenomenal approach. Both Mills and I come at this question from very different backgrounds, making interdisciplinary work challenging but rewarding. In this paper I will attempt to start from Mills’ foundational position to bridge the two frameworks together.

Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies, Mar 23, 2020

When a patient reports a dream or undirected fantasy in psychotherapy, classical Jungian techniqu... more When a patient reports a dream or undirected fantasy in psychotherapy, classical Jungian technique includes, among other things, comparing this material to that of cross-cultural symbolism (CCS). The validity of this aspect of the method hinges on what we think the origin of CCS is. If we believe that the lion's share of such content comes from specific universal tendencies of the individual psyche, then it is reasonable to look to CCS as a source of clinical interpretive information. If not, however, the method loses credibility. An examination of this comparison reveals that some discussions about archetypes have been plagued by a false dichotomy of biology vs. emergence. Addressing this problem helps to organize various theories about archetypes that compare CCS into a more productive dialogue.

International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2020

The question of whether or not archetypes are transmitted biologically or culturally is wrongly p... more The question of whether or not archetypes are transmitted biologically or culturally is wrongly posed and has hampered progress in Jungian thought regarding archetype theory. Considerations regarding psychological development show that some contents of the human psyche are, strictly speaking, neither biologically nor culturally derived. Examples are given, and the question becomes, How does this fact affect archetype theory? The present essay examines this question in depth.

International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2020

Commentary on philosopher and psychoanalysi Jon Mills

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2019

During the course of the 2018 IAAP conference, a criticism of Jung's idea of the archetype as inh... more During the course of the 2018 IAAP conference, a criticism of Jung's idea of the archetype as inherited predisposition was raised that involved examining a number of dreams and visions and assessing them through developments in genetics and neuroscience. From this comparison it was argued that archetypes cannot be inherited and could more reasonably be argued to derive from early experiences. In this essay, the author responds by showing how this conclusion is flawed due to being based on reductive errors. An alternative, non-reductive but inherited and biological position on the archetype is defended.

Understanding Dreams and Other Spontaneous Images, 2018

The Journal of analytical psychology, 2017

Technology, viewed more generally, is a collection of skills and methods that are used to accompl... more Technology, viewed more generally, is a collection of skills and methods that are used to accomplish an objective of some kind. Modernity has produced many kinds of ever-expanding new technologies, but it is also evident that technologies can be lost or fall out of use. A cross-cultural survey of ritual reveals a rather startling observation: that while developed nations often exceed other cultures in terms of material technology, they often pale by comparison in their use of ritual technology. In this essay we will see how ritual is a powerful sort of technology that developed nations have mostly allowed to drift out of regular, vigorous use, despite its numerous psychological and biological effects. This tendency has left one of the rituals we still have - psychotherapy itself - to be bereft of some of the typical tools for concretizing the symbolic in recurrent patterns around the world. Jung himself could be accused of being somewhat anti-ritual himself, enmeshed as he was in th...

Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 2015

Mourning is a normal, universal response to death with countless cultural elaborations worldwide.... more Mourning is a normal, universal response to death with countless cultural elaborations worldwide. When individuals are unable to progress through normal mourning, complicated grief (CG) can be a result. Ways in which humans deal with the universal consequences of death are examined and compared to the typical modern setting found in first world nations. It is suggested that normal mourning is facilitated by various ritual acts and if these activities lack certain features (suggested by cross-cultural analysis of mourning rituals), an increased risk of CG may result. Examination of rituals furthermore suggests ways clinicians may help patients cope with loss.

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2013

At the most basic level, archetypes represented Jung's attempt to explain the phenomenon of recur... more At the most basic level, archetypes represented Jung's attempt to explain the phenomenon of recurrent myths and folktale motifs (Jung 1956, 1959, para. 99). But the archetype remains controversial as an explanation of recurrent motifs, as the existence of recurrent motifs does not prove that archetypes exist. Thus, the challenge for contemporary archetype theory is not merely to demonstrate that recurrent motifs exist, since that is not disputed, but to demonstrate that archetypes exist and cause recurrent motifs. The present paper proposes a new model which is unlike others in that it postulates how the archetype creates resonant motifs. This model necessarily clarifies and adapts some of Jung's seminal ideas on archetype in order to provide a working framework grounded in contemporary practice and methodologies. For the first time, a model of archetype is proposed that can be validated on empirical, rather than theoretical grounds. This is achieved by linking the archetype to the hard data of recurrent motifs rather than academic trends in other fields.

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2011

, all training analysts at CIPA (Centro Italiano Psicologia Analytica) have succeeded in bringing... more , all training analysts at CIPA (Centro Italiano Psicologia Analytica) have succeeded in bringing together a cornucopia of distinctive Italian papers with additional contributions from Jean Knox, Hester McFarland Solomon, George Hogenson and, in the child and adolescent section, Gustav Bovensiepen, Brian Feldman and Brigitte Allain-Dupré. The authors set out to demonstrate the fertile influence of Jung's theories and their relevance to current psychoanalytic practice and research. This is a vast and demanding task and inevitably some of the papers struggle to remain within the confines of Jung's theories. The pitfall comes when a contemporary hermeneutic reading is projected onto theories from an earlier zeitgeist. The psychoanalytic community of today lives in interesting times poised on the cusp of a major paradigm shift and has to be prepared to sacrifice or revise some cherished tenets whilst other more obscure ones might re-emerge to coalesce with new findings from the neurosciences, philosophy and anthropology. Bisagni, Fina and Vezzoli identify a shift from traditional psychoanalytic paradigms towards a new paradigm of complexity. Most writers identify the common unifying theme as a shift towards a relational model and a move from Oedipal interpretations to affect regulation and the co-creation of meaning. The papers present Jung seen through a different cultural lens. Most contributors refer to psychology in the classical Jungian sense rather than what is now common practice in Anglo-Saxon academia. The editors preface the volumes with a general statement that Jungian concepts have been widely recognized and integrated into modern psychology. This might be specific to the Italian scene as it would hardly be recognized as a valid proposition for current clinical psychology. The authors succinctly trace the ancestral influences from Freud, Klein, Bion, Fordham and Bick, among others, and demonstrate how their thinking has evolved whilst still embedded in the analytic tradition. The novelty and freshness of the writing shines through in the synthesis of familiar theories with evocative Italian thinking, referenced in papers likely to be unfamiliar to the general reader. Regretfully, however, some of the rich cultural layering might be lost in translation, though this reflects the constant interplay between mimesis and alterity in the analytical dialogue where meaning always gets lost in translation as new meaning is co-created between patient and therapist. The two volumes offer a compendium of core Jungian and psychoanalytic concepts blended with findings from attachment theory and affective neuroscience. The editors have succeeded in bringing together papers from both developmental and classical Jungian traditions. The papers are stimulating to read as they vary in style from

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2011

Treating combat deployed soldiers is becoming more prevalent and needed in psychiatry. Modern com... more Treating combat deployed soldiers is becoming more prevalent and needed in psychiatry. Modern combat produces unique psychological challenges, including those without criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This article will attempt to share the primary author's experience with psychotherapy in a combat zone, along with understanding the general themes of dreams the author encountered while being deployed. Toward that end, the primary author [RW] discusses his personal experiences in Iraq working with soldiers whom he saw and treated while in theatre, with a particular focus on the dreams they reported. The co-authors [EG and MI] afterward collaborated with the primary author to formulate and provide insight into the dreams from a Jungian perspective.

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2010

The question of innateness has hounded Jungian psychology since Jung originally postulated the ar... more The question of innateness has hounded Jungian psychology since Jung originally postulated the archetype as an a priori structure within the psyche. During his life and after his death he was continually accused of Lamarckianism and criticized for his theory that the archetypes existed as prior structures. More recently, with the advent of genetic research and the human genome project, the idea that psychological structures can be innate has come under even harsher criticism even within Jungian thought. There appears to be a growing consensus that Jung's idea of innate psychological structures was misguided, and that perhaps the archetype-as-such should be abandoned for more developmental and 'emergent' theories of the psyche. The purpose of this essay is to question this conclusion, and introduce some literature on psychological innateness that appears relevant to this discussion.

International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2013

The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2014

ABSTRACT Early psychologists and anthropologists worked more closely in the early 20th century th... more ABSTRACT Early psychologists and anthropologists worked more closely in the early 20th century than they have subsequently. However, more recent scholarship has shown that the work of Freud, and even more so Jung, is receiving renewed interest from some interpretive anthropologists. In this article, some of the challenges inherent in the comparison of the depth psychology of Freud and Jung and the anthropology of Durkheim, Lévy-Brühl, Lévi-Strauss, Geertz, and Rappaport are summarized. An underlying methodology is proposed, which accounts for the complexity of interaction between individual and culture, but neither reduces culture unnecessarily nor isolates individual and culture from the elements from which they are both derived and influenced. The conscious mind thinks as a rule without regard to ancestral preconditions and without taking into account the influence this a priori factor has on the shaping of the individual's fate. Whereas we think in periods of years, the unconscious thinks and lives in terms of millennia : : : We are still living in a wonderful new world where man thinks himself astonishingly new and " modern. " This is unmistakable proof of the youthfulness of human consciousness, which has not yet grown aware of its historical antecedents.—Jung (1959, para. 499) The relationship between anthropology and depth psychology has been a turbulent one throughout the histories of both disciplines. In particular, the thinking of Freud and Jung with anthropologists Durkheim, Lévy-Brühl, Lévi-Strauss, and others has been observed to coincide as well as collide in many ways (

Cancer Letters, 2002

The ability of a cancer cell to metastasis to a distant site is partly dependent on the secretion... more The ability of a cancer cell to metastasis to a distant site is partly dependent on the secretion of matrix degrading enzymes. The lysosomal cysteine proteinases, cathepsins B and L, have been shown to be secreted by a number of cancer cells and have been implicated in metastasis. Cathepsins B and L are regulated by a class of inhibitors known as the cystatins; aberrant cystatin activity has also been shown in a number of cancer cells. Two prostate cancer cell lines, PC3 and DU145, and a normal prostate epithelial cell (NPC) culture were used to determine the importance of cathepsins L 1 B and cysteine proteinase inhibitor (CPI) activity in the ability of each cell line to invade the reconstituted basement membrane, Matrigel w. Cathepsin L 1 B and CPI activities were evident in the cell extract and conditioned media of PC3, DU145 and NPC; however, only the cancer cell lines PC3 and DU145 exhibited invasive ability. Invasive ability was partially inhibited following exposure of PC3 and DU145 cells to the CPI, E-64. Since environmental factors such as cell-cell interactions are responsible for mediating the expression of a number of genes involved in metastasis, the effects of cell density on cathepsin and CPI activities and invasive ability were also determined. CPI activity decreased and invasive ability increased with increasing cell density. We conclude that cathepsin L 1 B plays a significant role in the invasive ability of the two prostate cancer cell lines, PC3 and DU145. This may be due to decreased regulation by endogenous CPIs whose activity diminishes at high cell densities.

Biotechnic & Histochemistry, 2004

Cathepsins L and B are lysosomal cysteine proteinases whose activities and cellular location are ... more Cathepsins L and B are lysosomal cysteine proteinases whose activities and cellular location are altered in many types of cancers and cancer cell lines. Cathepsins L and B play an unspecified role in cancer invasion and metastasis. The purpose of our study was to determine whether cathepsins L and B are important for the ability of two prostate cancer cell lines, PC3 and DU 145, to invade the basement membrane-like preparation, Matrigel. Exposure of PC3 and DU145 to the irreversible cysteine proteinase inhibitor, E64, decreases the invasive ability of DU145, but not PC3. PC3 and DU145 were treated with the phorbol ester analogue, phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), a known tumor promoter that activates protein kinase C and contributes to the metastatic phenotype. PMA increased secreted cathepsin L+B activity and the invasive ability of PC3 and DU145; co-exposure to E64 and PMA decreased both cathepsin L+B activity and invasion. We conclude that DU145 requires cathepsin L+B activity more than PC3 for the invasion of the Matrigel. When the amount of secreted cathepsin L+B activity is increased by PMA treatment, however, PC3 becomes dependent on cathepsin L+B for invasion. Our study demonstrates that modulation of the amount of secreted cathepsin L+B activity influences the invasive phenotype of PC3 and DU145.

Psychoanalysis and the Mind-Body Problem, 2022

Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 2020

Though the clinical and experimental literature suggests that discussing dreams with therapy pati... more Though the clinical and experimental literature suggests that discussing dreams with therapy patients can be beneficial in a variety of important ways, there appears to be a gap in educational opportunities for psychiatric residents regarding this process. To address this educational need at the authors' residency program, a class in psychodynamically oriented dream analysis was implemented, and data was collected in the form of learner surveys both before and after they took the course. The survey found that the level of importance placed on dream work, the comfort level in discussing dreams with patients, and the frequency with which dreams were discussed in sessions were all increased after taking the course. Our conclusion was that these preliminary results suggest that implementing a structured course on dream analysis may help to fill the educational gap.

The Journal of analytical psychology, 2021

International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2021

This paper follows the ongoing discussion with philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills (2020) reg... more This paper follows the ongoing discussion with philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills (2020) regarding the nature, origin, and essence of the archetype and psyche, in which my approach that incorporates key features of the philosophy of mind is being compared and contrasted with Mills’ onto-phenomenal approach. Both Mills and I come at this question from very different backgrounds, making interdisciplinary work challenging but rewarding. In this paper I will attempt to start from Mills’ foundational position to bridge the two frameworks together.

Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies, Mar 23, 2020

When a patient reports a dream or undirected fantasy in psychotherapy, classical Jungian techniqu... more When a patient reports a dream or undirected fantasy in psychotherapy, classical Jungian technique includes, among other things, comparing this material to that of cross-cultural symbolism (CCS). The validity of this aspect of the method hinges on what we think the origin of CCS is. If we believe that the lion's share of such content comes from specific universal tendencies of the individual psyche, then it is reasonable to look to CCS as a source of clinical interpretive information. If not, however, the method loses credibility. An examination of this comparison reveals that some discussions about archetypes have been plagued by a false dichotomy of biology vs. emergence. Addressing this problem helps to organize various theories about archetypes that compare CCS into a more productive dialogue.

International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2020

The question of whether or not archetypes are transmitted biologically or culturally is wrongly p... more The question of whether or not archetypes are transmitted biologically or culturally is wrongly posed and has hampered progress in Jungian thought regarding archetype theory. Considerations regarding psychological development show that some contents of the human psyche are, strictly speaking, neither biologically nor culturally derived. Examples are given, and the question becomes, How does this fact affect archetype theory? The present essay examines this question in depth.

International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2020

Commentary on philosopher and psychoanalysi Jon Mills

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2019

During the course of the 2018 IAAP conference, a criticism of Jung's idea of the archetype as inh... more During the course of the 2018 IAAP conference, a criticism of Jung's idea of the archetype as inherited predisposition was raised that involved examining a number of dreams and visions and assessing them through developments in genetics and neuroscience. From this comparison it was argued that archetypes cannot be inherited and could more reasonably be argued to derive from early experiences. In this essay, the author responds by showing how this conclusion is flawed due to being based on reductive errors. An alternative, non-reductive but inherited and biological position on the archetype is defended.

Understanding Dreams and Other Spontaneous Images, 2018

The Journal of analytical psychology, 2017

Technology, viewed more generally, is a collection of skills and methods that are used to accompl... more Technology, viewed more generally, is a collection of skills and methods that are used to accomplish an objective of some kind. Modernity has produced many kinds of ever-expanding new technologies, but it is also evident that technologies can be lost or fall out of use. A cross-cultural survey of ritual reveals a rather startling observation: that while developed nations often exceed other cultures in terms of material technology, they often pale by comparison in their use of ritual technology. In this essay we will see how ritual is a powerful sort of technology that developed nations have mostly allowed to drift out of regular, vigorous use, despite its numerous psychological and biological effects. This tendency has left one of the rituals we still have - psychotherapy itself - to be bereft of some of the typical tools for concretizing the symbolic in recurrent patterns around the world. Jung himself could be accused of being somewhat anti-ritual himself, enmeshed as he was in th...

Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 2015

Mourning is a normal, universal response to death with countless cultural elaborations worldwide.... more Mourning is a normal, universal response to death with countless cultural elaborations worldwide. When individuals are unable to progress through normal mourning, complicated grief (CG) can be a result. Ways in which humans deal with the universal consequences of death are examined and compared to the typical modern setting found in first world nations. It is suggested that normal mourning is facilitated by various ritual acts and if these activities lack certain features (suggested by cross-cultural analysis of mourning rituals), an increased risk of CG may result. Examination of rituals furthermore suggests ways clinicians may help patients cope with loss.

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2013

At the most basic level, archetypes represented Jung's attempt to explain the phenomenon of recur... more At the most basic level, archetypes represented Jung's attempt to explain the phenomenon of recurrent myths and folktale motifs (Jung 1956, 1959, para. 99). But the archetype remains controversial as an explanation of recurrent motifs, as the existence of recurrent motifs does not prove that archetypes exist. Thus, the challenge for contemporary archetype theory is not merely to demonstrate that recurrent motifs exist, since that is not disputed, but to demonstrate that archetypes exist and cause recurrent motifs. The present paper proposes a new model which is unlike others in that it postulates how the archetype creates resonant motifs. This model necessarily clarifies and adapts some of Jung's seminal ideas on archetype in order to provide a working framework grounded in contemporary practice and methodologies. For the first time, a model of archetype is proposed that can be validated on empirical, rather than theoretical grounds. This is achieved by linking the archetype to the hard data of recurrent motifs rather than academic trends in other fields.

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2011

, all training analysts at CIPA (Centro Italiano Psicologia Analytica) have succeeded in bringing... more , all training analysts at CIPA (Centro Italiano Psicologia Analytica) have succeeded in bringing together a cornucopia of distinctive Italian papers with additional contributions from Jean Knox, Hester McFarland Solomon, George Hogenson and, in the child and adolescent section, Gustav Bovensiepen, Brian Feldman and Brigitte Allain-Dupré. The authors set out to demonstrate the fertile influence of Jung's theories and their relevance to current psychoanalytic practice and research. This is a vast and demanding task and inevitably some of the papers struggle to remain within the confines of Jung's theories. The pitfall comes when a contemporary hermeneutic reading is projected onto theories from an earlier zeitgeist. The psychoanalytic community of today lives in interesting times poised on the cusp of a major paradigm shift and has to be prepared to sacrifice or revise some cherished tenets whilst other more obscure ones might re-emerge to coalesce with new findings from the neurosciences, philosophy and anthropology. Bisagni, Fina and Vezzoli identify a shift from traditional psychoanalytic paradigms towards a new paradigm of complexity. Most writers identify the common unifying theme as a shift towards a relational model and a move from Oedipal interpretations to affect regulation and the co-creation of meaning. The papers present Jung seen through a different cultural lens. Most contributors refer to psychology in the classical Jungian sense rather than what is now common practice in Anglo-Saxon academia. The editors preface the volumes with a general statement that Jungian concepts have been widely recognized and integrated into modern psychology. This might be specific to the Italian scene as it would hardly be recognized as a valid proposition for current clinical psychology. The authors succinctly trace the ancestral influences from Freud, Klein, Bion, Fordham and Bick, among others, and demonstrate how their thinking has evolved whilst still embedded in the analytic tradition. The novelty and freshness of the writing shines through in the synthesis of familiar theories with evocative Italian thinking, referenced in papers likely to be unfamiliar to the general reader. Regretfully, however, some of the rich cultural layering might be lost in translation, though this reflects the constant interplay between mimesis and alterity in the analytical dialogue where meaning always gets lost in translation as new meaning is co-created between patient and therapist. The two volumes offer a compendium of core Jungian and psychoanalytic concepts blended with findings from attachment theory and affective neuroscience. The editors have succeeded in bringing together papers from both developmental and classical Jungian traditions. The papers are stimulating to read as they vary in style from

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2011

Treating combat deployed soldiers is becoming more prevalent and needed in psychiatry. Modern com... more Treating combat deployed soldiers is becoming more prevalent and needed in psychiatry. Modern combat produces unique psychological challenges, including those without criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This article will attempt to share the primary author's experience with psychotherapy in a combat zone, along with understanding the general themes of dreams the author encountered while being deployed. Toward that end, the primary author [RW] discusses his personal experiences in Iraq working with soldiers whom he saw and treated while in theatre, with a particular focus on the dreams they reported. The co-authors [EG and MI] afterward collaborated with the primary author to formulate and provide insight into the dreams from a Jungian perspective.

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2010

The question of innateness has hounded Jungian psychology since Jung originally postulated the ar... more The question of innateness has hounded Jungian psychology since Jung originally postulated the archetype as an a priori structure within the psyche. During his life and after his death he was continually accused of Lamarckianism and criticized for his theory that the archetypes existed as prior structures. More recently, with the advent of genetic research and the human genome project, the idea that psychological structures can be innate has come under even harsher criticism even within Jungian thought. There appears to be a growing consensus that Jung's idea of innate psychological structures was misguided, and that perhaps the archetype-as-such should be abandoned for more developmental and 'emergent' theories of the psyche. The purpose of this essay is to question this conclusion, and introduce some literature on psychological innateness that appears relevant to this discussion.

International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2013

The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2014

ABSTRACT Early psychologists and anthropologists worked more closely in the early 20th century th... more ABSTRACT Early psychologists and anthropologists worked more closely in the early 20th century than they have subsequently. However, more recent scholarship has shown that the work of Freud, and even more so Jung, is receiving renewed interest from some interpretive anthropologists. In this article, some of the challenges inherent in the comparison of the depth psychology of Freud and Jung and the anthropology of Durkheim, Lévy-Brühl, Lévi-Strauss, Geertz, and Rappaport are summarized. An underlying methodology is proposed, which accounts for the complexity of interaction between individual and culture, but neither reduces culture unnecessarily nor isolates individual and culture from the elements from which they are both derived and influenced. The conscious mind thinks as a rule without regard to ancestral preconditions and without taking into account the influence this a priori factor has on the shaping of the individual's fate. Whereas we think in periods of years, the unconscious thinks and lives in terms of millennia : : : We are still living in a wonderful new world where man thinks himself astonishingly new and " modern. " This is unmistakable proof of the youthfulness of human consciousness, which has not yet grown aware of its historical antecedents.—Jung (1959, para. 499) The relationship between anthropology and depth psychology has been a turbulent one throughout the histories of both disciplines. In particular, the thinking of Freud and Jung with anthropologists Durkheim, Lévy-Brühl, Lévi-Strauss, and others has been observed to coincide as well as collide in many ways (

Cancer Letters, 2002

The ability of a cancer cell to metastasis to a distant site is partly dependent on the secretion... more The ability of a cancer cell to metastasis to a distant site is partly dependent on the secretion of matrix degrading enzymes. The lysosomal cysteine proteinases, cathepsins B and L, have been shown to be secreted by a number of cancer cells and have been implicated in metastasis. Cathepsins B and L are regulated by a class of inhibitors known as the cystatins; aberrant cystatin activity has also been shown in a number of cancer cells. Two prostate cancer cell lines, PC3 and DU145, and a normal prostate epithelial cell (NPC) culture were used to determine the importance of cathepsins L 1 B and cysteine proteinase inhibitor (CPI) activity in the ability of each cell line to invade the reconstituted basement membrane, Matrigel w. Cathepsin L 1 B and CPI activities were evident in the cell extract and conditioned media of PC3, DU145 and NPC; however, only the cancer cell lines PC3 and DU145 exhibited invasive ability. Invasive ability was partially inhibited following exposure of PC3 and DU145 cells to the CPI, E-64. Since environmental factors such as cell-cell interactions are responsible for mediating the expression of a number of genes involved in metastasis, the effects of cell density on cathepsin and CPI activities and invasive ability were also determined. CPI activity decreased and invasive ability increased with increasing cell density. We conclude that cathepsin L 1 B plays a significant role in the invasive ability of the two prostate cancer cell lines, PC3 and DU145. This may be due to decreased regulation by endogenous CPIs whose activity diminishes at high cell densities.

Biotechnic & Histochemistry, 2004

Cathepsins L and B are lysosomal cysteine proteinases whose activities and cellular location are ... more Cathepsins L and B are lysosomal cysteine proteinases whose activities and cellular location are altered in many types of cancers and cancer cell lines. Cathepsins L and B play an unspecified role in cancer invasion and metastasis. The purpose of our study was to determine whether cathepsins L and B are important for the ability of two prostate cancer cell lines, PC3 and DU 145, to invade the basement membrane-like preparation, Matrigel. Exposure of PC3 and DU145 to the irreversible cysteine proteinase inhibitor, E64, decreases the invasive ability of DU145, but not PC3. PC3 and DU145 were treated with the phorbol ester analogue, phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), a known tumor promoter that activates protein kinase C and contributes to the metastatic phenotype. PMA increased secreted cathepsin L+B activity and the invasive ability of PC3 and DU145; co-exposure to E64 and PMA decreased both cathepsin L+B activity and invasion. We conclude that DU145 requires cathepsin L+B activity more than PC3 for the invasion of the Matrigel. When the amount of secreted cathepsin L+B activity is increased by PMA treatment, however, PC3 becomes dependent on cathepsin L+B for invasion. Our study demonstrates that modulation of the amount of secreted cathepsin L+B activity influences the invasive phenotype of PC3 and DU145.