The study was aimed at detecting the expression of a newly found oncogene, astrocyte elevated gene-1 (AEG-1), in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and its correlation with histopathologic features and the survival of patients. Real-time reverse transcription-PCR and Western blot showed markedly higher expression of AEG-1 in 8 cases of RCC tissue compared with the paired normal tissue from the same patient. The expression level of AEG-1 was also increased in four RCC cell lines in contrast with normal tubular epithelial human kidney cells 2 (HK-2) at both mRNA and protein levels. Furthermore, immunohistochemistry analysis showed highly expressed AEG-1 in 96 of 102 (94.1%) cases of paraffin-embedded archival RCC tissue. Statistical analysis showed a significant correlation of AEG-1 expression with tumor grade (P <0.001), clinical staging (P = 0.003), T classification (P = 0.003) as well as metastasis classification (P=0.032). The means for survival time of low AEG-1 expression group was 76.98m while high AEG-1expression group was 60.94m. Our results suggest that AEG-1 protein is overexpressed in RCC and plays an important role in tumor differentiation and progression. High AEG-1 expression is closely associated with poor prognosis.
Astrocyte-elevated gene-1 (AEG-1) is implicated in the oncogenesis and angiogenesis of various types of human cancers. However, the biological roles of AEG-1 in cervical carcinoma remain to be further elucidated. In the present study, we demonstrated that the expression of AEG-1 was markedly upregulated in the cervical carcinoma cell lines HeLa, CaSki and SiHa, as well as in 8 paired primary cervical carcinoma tissue (CCT) specimens at both the transcriptional and translational levels when compared with normal cervical epithelial cells (NCECs). Furthermore, immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis demonstrated that 180 of 200 (90%) archived CCT specimens exhibited positive staining for AEG-1, and statistical analysis revealed that the upregulation of AEG-1 was significantly correlated with the clinical staging of the patients (P=0.034), including T (P=0.019), N (P=0.038) and M classification (P=0.018) as well as tumor differentiation (P=0.043). Furthermore, loss‑ and gain‑of‑function results showed that knockdown of AEG-1 expression by specific shRNA not only inhibited SiHa cell proliferation and invasive ability, but also significantly decreased the expression of the angiogenesis-related genes HIF-1α, Tie2, VEGF and TEM1/CD248. Moreover, an increased vascular formation ability was observed in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) co-cultured with conditioned medium both from SiHa cells and NCECs transfected with ectopic AEG-1. In conclusion, these results suggest that elevated expression of AEG-1 plays an important role in the aggressiveness and angiogenesis of cervical carcinoma and that AEG‑1 represents a novel and valuable predictive factor for the prognostic evaluation of cervical carcinoma patients.
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