ISSN: 1449-2288International Journal of Biological Sciences
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Int J Biol Sci 2011; 7(5):496-504. doi:10.7150/ijbs.7.496 This issue Cite
Research Paper
Overexpression of Grb2-associated Binder 2 in Human Lung Cancer
1. Department of Pathology, Tianjin Medical University, Heping District, Tianjin 300070, China;
2. Institute of Environment and Health; Key Laboratory of Risk Assessment and Control for Environment & Food Safety, No.1, Dali Road, Tianjin 300050, China.
Abstract
Objective: Grb2-associated binder 2 (Gab2), a member of the family of Gab scaffolding adaptors, transmits and amplifies the signals from receptor tyrosine kinases. A recent study demonstrated that Gab2 was over-expressed in breast cancers and metastatic melanomas, and Gab2 was an oncogenic protein. However, the roles of Gab2 in lung cancers are largely unknown.
Method: In this study, to investigate whether Gab2 expression could be a characteristic of lung cancers, we analyzed the expression of Gab2 in 88 lung frozen tissue samples and 122 paraffin-embedded tissue specimens, using quantitative real-time-PCR, immunohistochemistry and western blot.
Results: We found that the positive expression rate of Gab2 in the tumor tissues, as detected by immunohistochemistry, 62.5% in squamous cell cancers, 51.35% in adenocarcinomas, and 75% in other types of lung cancers, was significantly higher than that (12%) in normal lung tissues. The mRNA expression detected by quantitative real-time-PCR and protein expression detected by western blotting in different groups were consistent with the immunohistochemical results.
Conclusion: Our data indicate that Gab2 is over-expressed in malignant lung tissues compared with that in normal lung tissues, and suggest that Gab2 expression may play a role in lung cancer development.
Keywords: Gab2, lung cancer, quantitative real-time-PCR, immunohistochemistry, western blot
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