We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Loss of aquaporin-4 expression and putative function in non-small cell lung cancer.
- Authors
Warth, Arne; Muley, Thomas; Meister, Michael; Herpel, Esther; Pathil, Anita; Hoffmann, Hans; Schnabel, Philipp A; Bender, Christian; Buness, Andreas; Schirmacher, Peter; Kuner, Ruprecht
- Abstract
<bold>Background: </bold>Aquaporins (AQPs) have been recognized to promote tumor progression, invasion, and metastasis and are therefore recognized as promising targets for novel anti-cancer therapies. Potentially relevant AQPs in distinct cancer entities can be determined by a comprehensive expression analysis of the 13 human AQPs.<bold>Methods: </bold>We analyzed the presence of all AQP transcripts in 576 different normal lung and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) samples using microarray data and validated our findings by qRT-PCR and immunohistochemistry.<bold>Results: </bold>Variable expression of several AQPs (AQP1, -3, -4, and -5) was found in NSCLC and normal lung tissues. Furthermore, we identified remarkable differences between NSCLC subtypes in regard to AQP1, -3 and -4 expression. Higher transcript and protein levels of AQP4 in well-differentiated lung adenocarcinomas suggested an association with a more favourable prognosis. Beyond water transport, data mining of co-expressed genes indicated an involvement of AQP4 in cell-cell signalling, cellular movement and lipid metabolism, and underlined the association of AQP4 to important physiological functions in benign lung tissue.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>Our findings accentuate the need to identify functional differences and redundancies of active AQPs in normal and tumor cells in order to assess their value as promising drug targets.
- Publication
BMC Cancer, 2011, Vol 11, Issue 1, p161
- ISSN
1471-2407
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1186/1471-2407-11-161