{"doi":"10.1101/2020.04.24.056259","title":"Expression of <i>ACE2</i> , the SARS-CoV-2 receptor, and <i>TMPRSS2</i> in prostate epithelial cells","abstract":"Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has spread across more than 200 countries and resulted in over 170,000 deaths. For unclear reasons, higher mortality rates from COVID-19 have been reported in men compared to women. While the SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 and serine protease TMPRSS2 have been detected in lung and other tissues, it is not clear what sex differences may exist. We analyzed a publicly-available normal human prostate single-cell RNA sequencing dataset and found TMPRSS2 and ACE2 co-expressing cells in epithelial cells, with a higher proportion in club and hillock cells. Then we investigated datasets of lung epithelial cells and also found club cells co-expressing TMPRSS2 and ACE2 . A comparison of ACE2 expression in lung tissue between males and females showed higher expression in males and a larger proportion of ACE2 + cells in male type II pneumocytes, with preliminary evidence that type II pneumocytes of all lung epithelial cell types showed the highest expression of ACE2 . These results raise the possibility that sex differences in ACE2 expression and the presence of double-positive cells in the prostate may contribute to the observed disparities of COVID-19.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":119790,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":15,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8328,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":74054,"name":"Bobak Seddighzadeh","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":260283,"name":"Matthew R. Cooperberg","orcid":"0000-0003-4339-6685","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36083,"name":"Franklin W. Huang","orcid":"0000-0001-5447-0436","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":74108,"name":"Hanbing Song","orcid":"0000-0002-2164-8813","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":14,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:13.002105Z","pmid":"32510524","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}