A lesson for cancer research: placental microarray gene analysis in preeclampsia

Abstract

Tumor progression and pregnancy share many common features, such as immune tolerance and invasion. The invasion of trophoblasts in the placenta into the uterine wall is essential for fetal development, and is thus precisely regulated. Its deregulation has been implicated in preeclampsia, a leading cause for maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity. Pathogenesis of preeclampsia remains to be defined. Microarray-based gene profiling has been widely used for identifying genes responsible for preeclampsia. In this review, we have summarized the recent data from the microarray studies with preeclamptic placentas. Despite the complex of gene signatures, suggestive of the heterogeneity of preeclampsia, these studies identified a number of differentially expressed genes associated with preeclampsia. Interestingly, most of them have been reported to be tightly involved in tumor progression. We have discussed these interesting genes and analyzed their potential molecular functions in preeclampsia, compared with their roles in malignancy development. Further investigations are warranted to explore the involvement in molecular network of each identified gene, which may provide not only novel strategies for prevention and therapy for preeclampsia but also a better understanding of cancer cells. The trophoblastic cells, with their capacity for proliferation and differentiation, apoptosis and survival, migration, angiogenesis and immune modulation by exploiting similar molecular pathways, make them a compelling model for cancer research.

B-cell lymphoma 6 promotes proliferation and survival of trophoblastic cells

“…Gene analysis has been widely used to study altered expression of important genes in various signaling pathways linked to preeclampsia. 5 In a previous study, we have designed our own gene array targeting the critical signal pathways and analyzed placental samples from preeclampsia patients and controls. We have verified that genes associated with angiogenesis and migration pathways are mostly altered in preeclamptic placentas.…”

Partial least squares-based gene expression analysis in preeclampsia

“…Several gene expression studies (Lapaire et al, 2012;Louwen et al, 2012;Meng et al, 2012;Zhou et al, 2013) have been conducted to investigate expression differences between preeclampsia patients and healthy controls. The major challenge for microarray analysis is to develop a suitable statistical model to deal with the small sample number and large number of genes.…”

Function of survivin in trophoblastic cells of the placenta

“…It affects 2-8% of all pregnancies and is one of the leading causes of maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity worldwide [24]. Despite intensive research, its pathogenesis is not totally understood [22][23][24][25]. In our previous work, based on our own designed gene arrays (manuscript submitted), we observed that the gene coding for survivin was reduced in preeclamptic placenta compared to control.…”