Prostate cancer cell lines DU145, PC3 and LnCaP were grown in RPMI-1640 (Life Technologies, Carlsbad, CA, USA), whereas VCaP was grown in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium with penicillin–streptomycin (100 U/ml) and 10% fetal bovine serum (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) in 5% CO2 cell culture incubator. The HEK293 (ATCC), RWPE-1 (henceforth referred as RWPE; ATCC, Manassas, VA, USA) cells were grown in their respective medium as specified by the suppliers. Lentiviruses were generated by the University of Michigan Vector Core (Ann Arbor, MI, USA). Prostate cancer cells were infected with lentiviruses expressing SUB1 shRNA or Non-T shRNA controls and stable cell lines were generated by selection with 1 μg/ml puromycin (Life Technologies).