Expression Of Voltage-gated Potassium Channel Kv3.4 In Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma And Its Significance

Background Tumors are the important diseases endangering human health, and the oral cavity cancer is one of the head and neck malignant tumors, oral cancer is in the first place,and about 90% of them is oral squamous cell carcinoma(oral squamous cell carcinoma,OSCC), much more are developed by precancerous lesions, such as leukoplakia,erythema. OSCC belongs to malignant tumor, and is derived from the oral mucosa stratified squamous epithelium; its pathogenic mechanism is a process of multiple factors, such as smoking, drinking, snuffing and papilloma virus, and so on. In the most common, OSCC is located in oral jaws and the lateral margin of the lips and tongue. Ion channel is a membrane protein which found on the cell membrane; and among of them,potassium channels have the most kinds of species and common protein microchannels.Different types of potassium ion channels are distributed in tumor cell membrane, so the potassium ion channels have been linked with a growing number of diseases. The preliminary research showed voltage-gated potassium channel type Kv3.4 plays an important role in the process of the formation of tumor, especially in OSCC; by further research, Kv3.4 may become one of the early auxiliary diagnosis molecular indicators in OSCC and precancerous lesions, can provide new targets for the treatment of OSCC.Objective:To evaluate the expression of Kv3.4 and to determine its significance in oral squamous cell carcinoma(OSCC) and precancerous lesion.Methods Immunohistochemical S-P methods were performed on 57 paraffin-embedded samples to detect the expression of Kv3.4 at tissue level,which were collected from Pathology Department of Anhui Province Stomatological Hospital between January2013 and June 2014, then analyzed the relationship between the expression of Kv3.4and precancerous lesion and clinical pathologic factors of oral squamous cell carcinoma,such as pathologic classification, clinical stage and lymph node metastasis. 6 cases of normal oral mucosa tissues, 23 cases of OSCC and 13 cases of precancerous lesions were collected from oral and maxillofacial surgery of The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University during May 2014 to March 2015, real-time quantitative PCR and western blotting were used to detect the expression of Kv3.4 in these 42 cases at the molecular and protein level.Results Real-time quantitative PCR showed the relative expression quantity Kv3.4 in normal oral mucosa, precancerous lesions, and OSCC tissues(0.853±0.484, 3.501±2.512,18.482±7.698), the relative expression level of Kv3.4 in OSCC tissues and precancerous lesions were higher than normal group, the significant differences had statistical significance(P=0.002, P=0.029). The relative expression level of Kv3.4 protein in precancerous lesions and OSCC tissues were 0.871±0.138 and 0.345±0.028 by western blot, both were higher than in normal tissues(0.182±0.096), the significant differences had statistical significance(P=0.002). In 57 paraffin-embedded samples, the positive expression rates of Kv3.4 in normal tissues, precancerous lesions and OSCC tissues were 33.3%, 72.2% and 94.9%, respectively; the significant differences had statistical significance(P<0.05). But the expression of Kv3.4 did not have significant correlation with patients’ age, gender, presence of lymph node metastasis and clinical stage(P>0.05).Conclusions The expression of Kv3.4 is positively correlated to OSCC’s occurrence and development. Detection of the expression of Kv3.4 may be used for early diagnosis and prognostic judgment of oral squamous cell carcinoma and precancerous lesions.