Previous study found that AR in prostate may act as both a proliferator and a suppressor to promote or suppress the metastasis of prostate cancer (PCa). In current work, we demonstrated that AR could suppress PCa cell invasion through altering the miR-4496/beta-catenin signals. And mechanisms dissection found that AR could negatively regulate the expression of beta-catenin through enhancing the miR-4496 expression via directly binding to the AR-response-elements (AREs) of miR-4496 promoter, subsequently, the miRNA could directly target the 3' UTR of the beta-catenin-mRNA to reduce its expression. To conclude, our work suggests that AR might play an important role to suppress PCa cell invasion, targeting the newly identified ARimiR-4496/beta-catenin signaling with small molecules may help us to build up new therapeutic approaches to better suppress the metastasis of PCa. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.