Journal of cell science

Journal of cell science. cervical cancer cell proliferation, migration, and invasion [16]; yet down regulation of and is associated with enhanced melanoma cell migration, invasion and immunosuppression [17]. Very little is known about the function of GALNT1. Its expression is critical during early development of submandibular glands in mice SAV1 through influencing the composition of extracellular matrix [18]. Knockout of GALNT1 in mice resulted in defective leukocyte recruitment [19]. O-glycosylation and Tn antigen expression have been reported in HCC [12, 20, 21]. is the most highly expressed GALNT family genes in the liver [12]. However, no one has reported on the expression and function of GALNT1 in HCC. We therefore studied the roles of GALNT1 in HCC cellular behaviors and its clinical significance. RESULTS GALNT1 is frequently up-regulated in HCC and higher expression levels are associated with poorer overall survival To investigate the expression level of mRNA in HCC, we first analyzed resources from the public database (NextBio Research). mRNA expression levels are increased in HCC tumors (fold change: 2.29; TZ9 GS50579) and in stage T3 HCC tumors (fold change: 2.16; GS50579) compared with normal liver tissues (Figure ?(Figure1A).1A). To confirm this finding, paired HCC tissues of 15 patients from the NTUH were collected for real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis (Figure ?(Figure1B).1B). The results reveal that expression level is often increased in HCC tumors, < 0.05, with 60% of the HCC patients exhibiting increased expression levels in the tumors compared with the adjacent non-tumor tissues. Immunohistochemical staining of GALNT1 in 16 paired HCC tissues from the NTUH was performed and the staining intensity of tumor (T) and the adjacent non-tumor (N) tissues was scored from 0, +1, +2, and +3 for none, low, moderate, and high staining (Figure ?(Figure1C).1C). The immunohistochemistry (IHC) scores of HCC tumors TZ9 were compared with the scores of the adjacent non-tumor tissues. The results further confirm that GALNT1 expression level is significantly increased in HCC tumors, < 0.01, with 75% of the HCC patients exhibiting higher GALNT1 expression levels compared with the adjacent non-tumor tissues. To determine the correlation of GALNT1 expression with HCC clinicopathologic features we recruited 140 HCC tumors of patients from NTUH and analyzed for the mRNA expression with real-time RT-PCR. Supplementary Table S1 displays TZ9 the patients information. We found that HCC tumors exhibiting higher expression levels are TZ9 associated with poorer patient overall five-year survival (Figure ?(Figure1D),1D), < 0.05. These findings show that GALNT1 is often overexpressed in HCC tumors and that higher expression level is correlated with decreased HCC patient overall survival. Open in a separate window Figure 1 GALNT1 is frequently up-regulated in HCC and higher expression levels are associated with poor overall survival(A) Resources analyzed from public databases (NextBio Research GS50579 and "type":"entrez-geo","attrs":"text":"GSE62222","term_id":"62222"GSE62222) reveal that expression is commonly increased in (1) hepatocellular carcinoma tumors compared with normal liver tissues (fold change: 2.29) and (2) hepatocellular carcinoma stage T3 compared with normal liver tissues (fold change: 2.16). < 0.01. (B) Real-time RT-PCR quantification of mRNA levels in 15 paired HCC tissues (normalized to expression) and expressed as fold change in HCC tumor (T) compared with non-tumor tissues (N) (left panel). Sixty percent of the patients analyzed display higher expression levels in HCC tumors compared with TZ9 the adjacent non-tumor tissues, *< 0.05. (C) Immunohistochemistry of GALNT1 of 16 paired HCC tissues. Representative images of non-tumor and tumor tissues are shown (upper panel), scale bar: 25 m. GALNT1 intensity of HCC tumors was compared with their adjacent non-tumor parts (lower left) and 75% of the patients display increased GALNT1 expression.