The Correlation Between HTERT, MiR-29c, MiR-124, MiR-135a And MiR-148a And Gastric Cancer

OBJECTIVE:To investigate the expression level and analyze the clinical significance of human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) in gastric cancer tissues.METHODS:Collecting 60 cases of histological specimen of gastric caner with detail clinicopathological data as experimental group, while 30 cases of normal gastric tissues was as control group. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction was used to detect the expression level of hTERT mRNA in the gastric tissues; Meanwhile, MaxVisionTM immunohistochemical technique was adopted to detect the expression of hTERT protein in gastric tissue sections. Variance analysis, Chi-square test or continuous correction Chi-square test, Spearman rank correlation, Survival analysis and other statistical methods were used to process the experimental data. We analyzed the expression level of hTERT mRNA and protein in gastric cancer tissues and investigated the correlation of them. Furthermore, we evaluated the relationship between the expression of hTERT mRNA and the clinicopathological feature and clinic prognosis of gastric caner patients.RESULTS:hTERT mRNA expressed in both gastric caner group and gastric normal group. However, the expression level of hTERT mRNA was significantly higher in the gastric cancer group than that of the normal group, the two groups had statistical difference (P<0.05); hTERT protein was mainly expressed in the gastric cancer cell cytoplasm, but also was occasionally observed in the cell nucleus. The positive expression rate of hTERT protein was 83.3% in the gastric cancer group and was 40.0% in the normal group, they were significant difference (P<0.01). The expression level of hTERT mRNA was positive correlated with hTERT protein(r=0.733, P<0.01). There was no obvious association for the expression level of hTERT mRNA with age, sex, the size of tumor, depth of infiltration, differentiation of tumor in gastric cancer patients (P>0.05). However, it was significantly associated with lymph node metastases, distant metastases and clinical stage (P<0.05). The Survival analysis showed that the median survival time was 24 months and 64 months in the patients with high and low expression of hTERT mRNA respectively, the comparison of the two groups had statistical difference (P=0.015).CONCLUSION:These results suggest that hTERT is overexpressed in gastric cancer tissues and it is associated with the progress and prognosis of gastric cancer. Therefore, hTERT is expected to become one of the evaluation index of progression and prognosis of gastric cancer.OBJECTIVE:To investigate the expression level of miR-29c, miR-124, miR-135a and miR-148a in gastric cancer and evaluate the predictive ability of miR-29c, miR-124, miR-135a and miR-148a for lymph node metastasis (LNM) and tumor stage.METHODS:Collecting 60 cases of histological specimen of gastric caner with detail clinicopathological data as experimental group, while 30 cases of normal gastric tissue was as control group. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction was used to detect the expression level of miR-29c, miR-124, miR-135a and miR-148a in the gastric tissues. Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis H test, Logistic regression, Spearman correlation, receiver-operating characteristic curves (ROC), McNemar test were used to process the experimental data. To investigate the relationship between the expression of miR-29c, miR-124, miR-135a, miR-148a and the clinical pathological parameters of gastric caner. Furthermore, we evaluated the predictive ability of miR-29c, miR-124, miR-135a and miR-148a for LNM and tumor stage in gastric cancer.RESULTS:miR-29c, miR-124, miR-135a and miR-148a were down-regulated in gastric cancer tissues (P<0.05). The low expression of miR-124 and miR-135a in LNM group and tumor Ⅲ-Ⅳ stages (P<0.01) presented the potential correlation with LNM and tumor stage; Spearman correlation analysis showed that the two miRNAs were correlated with (r=0.730). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that miR-124 had better predictive ability to identify LNM and tumor stage. It could discriminate non-LNM from LNM with 80.0% sensitivity and 80.0% specificity and discriminate tumor Ⅰ-Ⅱ stages from tumor Ⅲ-Ⅳ stages with 71.9%sensitivity and 75.0% specificity at the best cut-off value of 0.013. Compared with CT imaging, miR-124 had similar specificity (0.800 versus 0.900, P= 0.508) but higher sensitivity (0.800 versus 0.500, P= 0.022) for lymph node assessment; Combined of miR-124 and CT imaging, The sensitivity and specificity of assessing LNM were raised to 83.3% and 90.0% respectively.CONCLUSION:miR-29c, miR-124, miR-135a and miR-148a were down-regulated in gastric cancer tissues; miR-124 had better predictive ability to identify LNM and tumor stage; Consequently, miR-124 may be a candidate molecule for predicting LNM and tumor stage in gastric cancer.