Loss of aquaporin-4 expression and putative function in non-small cell lung cancer

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Abstract

Background: 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.Methods: 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.Results: 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.Conclusions: 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. © 2011 Warth et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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Warth, A., Muley, T., Meister, M., Herpel, E., Pathil, A., Hoffmann, H., … Kuner, R. (2011). Loss of aquaporin-4 expression and putative function in non-small cell lung cancer. BMC Cancer, 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2407-11-161

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