Increased expression of endonuclease G in gastric and colorectal carcinomas.
OBJECTIVE
Endonuclease G (EndoG) is a mitochondrial protein that plays a role in DNA fragmentation during apoptosis. In addition, EndoG plays a role in cell proliferation and survival. It may be important to identify EndoG protein expression to predict its function in human cancers. The aim of this study was to explore whether alteration of EndoG expression might be a characteristic of colorectal or gastric carcinoma.


METHODS
We investigated EndoG protein expression in 103 colorectal and 60 gastric carcinoma tissues by immunohistochemistry using a tissue microarray approach.


RESULTS
Expression of EndoG was detected in 72 (70%) of the colorectal carcinomas and 41 (68%) of the gastric carcinomas in cytoplasm. By contrast, normal mucosal cells of both stomach and colon tissues showed no or very weak expression of EndoG. There was no significant association of EndoG expression with clinocopathological characteristics, including invasion, metastasis and stage.


CONCLUSIONS
Our data indicate that EndoG inactivation by loss of expression may not occur in colorectal and gastric cancers. Rather, increased expression of EndoG in colorectal and gastric cancer cells compared to their normal mucosal epithelial counterparts suggests that neo-expression of EndoG may play a role in both colorectal and gastric tumorigenesis.
Yoo
Nam Jin
NJ
Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea.
Jeong
Eun Goo
EG
Kim
Min Sung
MS
Ahn
Chang Hyeok
CH
Kim
Sung Soo
SS
Lee
Sug Hyung
SH
D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000473:pathology; D004706:Endodeoxyribonucleases / Q000032:analysis*; D015971:Gene Expression Regulation, Enzymologic; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D006801:Humans; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D013274:Stomach Neoplasms / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000473:pathology
D004706:Endodeoxyribonucleases; C052391:endonuclease G