Nrf2 is a potential prognostic marker and promotes proliferation and invasion in human hepatocellular carcinoma

BMC Cancer

Research Article

Lingmin Zhang¹  Qinsheng Wen²  Mingxin Zhang²  Qi Yang²  Chao Zhang²  Jingjie Wang²  Suna Zhou³ 

[1] Department of Anesthesiology, First Affiliated Hospital, Medical School, Xi’an Jiaotong University, 710061, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China;Department of Gastroenterology, Tangdu Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, 710038, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China;Department of Radiotherapy, Tangdu Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, 710038, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China;

关键词: Nuclear factor E2-related factor 2;    Human hepatocellular carcinoma;    Prognostic marker;    Proliferation;    Invasion;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12885-015-1541-1

 received in 2015-01-03, accepted in 2015-07-13,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundNuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2 or NFE2L2) is abundantly expressed in cancer cells and relates to proliferation, invasion, and chemoresistance. Our early observations also found that expression of Nrf2 was up-regulated in kinds of cancer including human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells. But there are limited reports about the expression, significance, function of Nrf2 in HCC.MethodsFirst, Nrf2 expression was analyzed in HCC cell lines and tumor samples. Then, the relationship of Nrf2 with clinicopathological factors and survival were analyzed. Further, the effect of Nrf2 on cell proliferation, apoptosis, and metastasis was examined in vitro by modulating expression of Nrf2 through specific shRNA or expression plasmid. Last, the potential mechanisms were also investigated.ResultsNrf2 was up-regulated in HCC, and expression of Nrf2 was correlated with tumor differentiation, metastasis, and tumor size. Univariate and multivariate analyses indicated that high Nrf2 expression might be a poor prognostic factor. Further studies demonstrated that inhibition of Nrf2 expression inhibited proliferation by inducing apoptosis and repressed invasion, and up-regulation of Nrf2 expression resulted in opposite phenotypes. Moreover, there are positive correlation between Nrf2 expression and that of Bcl-xL and MMP-9.ConclusionNrf2 is a potential prognostic marker and promotes proliferation and invasion in human hepatocellular carcinoma partly through regulating expression of Bcl-xL and MMP-9.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Zhang et al. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.