It provides more convincing in vivo data to suggest that Mel-18 may play a crucial opposite role to Bmi-1 and act as a tumor suppressor in gastric cancer, and associated with the carcinogenesis, progression, and metastasis of gastric cancer. In the current study we demonstrated that neoplastic cells in gastric SB202190 cancer can’t normally express Bmi-1 and Mel-18. We propose that abnormal PcG expression results in an altered composition of the
PRC1 in gastric cancer cells, which probably affects expression of target genes involved in regulation of senescence and/or the cell cycle. Our observations add to the increasing evidence that PcG genes are very important contributors selleck products Wnt inhibitor to the carcinogenesis and progression of human tumors. We additonally found that both Mel-18 and Bmi-1 correlated with lymph node metastasis. The mechanisms that they regulate cancer cells metastasis need to be further studied. This research is the first time to study the correlation between Mel-18 or Bmi-1 expression at mRNA level and clinicopathological characteristics of gastric cancer by quantitative method. The expression of Bmi-1 and Mel-18 was correlated with gastric cancer progress, advanced gastric cancer more likely expressed higher Bmi-1 and lower Mel-18. Its clinical
value deserves further study in a larger patient population. Conclusions In conclusion, our results suggest that Bmi-1 and Mel-18 are coordinately deregulated. Interestingly, we observed a reverse correlation between the expression levels of Bmi-1 and Mel-18 in gastric cancer. Both Bmi-1 and Mel-18 are involved in the development and progression of gastric cancer. Bmi-1 and Mel-18 might be novel molecular markers for gastric cancer. But, the detailed mechanisms of
regulation of Bmi-1 and Mel-18 remained to be elucidated. Acknowledgements We thank for Chinese National Natural Scientific Funding (30873019, 81041074) and Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars from State Education Ministry for providing the fund, Wei Qin and LvZheng Cheng for helpful discussions and Non-specific serine/threonine protein kinase advice. References 1. Alkema MJ, Bronk M, Verhoeven E, Otte A, van ‘t Veer LJ, Berns A, van Lohuizen M: Identification of Bmi-1 interacting proteins as constituents of a multimeric mammalian Polycomb complex. Genes Dev 1997, 11: 226–240.PubMedCrossRef 2. Jacobs JJ, van Lohuizen M: Polycomb repression:from cellular memory to cellular proliferation and cancer. Biochim Biophys Acta 2002, 1602: 151–161.PubMed 3. Leung C, Lingbeek M, Shakhova O, Liu J, Tanger E, Saremaslani P, van Lohuizen M, Marino S: Bmi-1is essential for cerebellar development and is overexpressed in human medulloblastomas. Nature 2004, 428: 337–341.PubMedCrossRef 4.