Expression levels of cleaved caspase-3 and caspase-3 in tumorigenesis and prognosis of oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Apoptosis plays a dual role in cancer development and malignancy. The role of apoptosis-related caspases in cancer remains controversial, particularly in oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC). In this study, we examined the protein levels of cleaved caspase-3, caspase-3, caspase-8, and caspase-9 on tissue microarrays consisting of samples from 246 OTSCC patients by immunohistochemistry. Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicated that the protein levels of cleaved caspase-3, caspase-3, caspase-8, and caspase-9 in tumor tissues were significantly higher compared to those in adjacent normal tissues (all p<0.001). The expression level of caspase-8 in tumors was elevated in patients with lymph node invasion. Moreover, positive expression of cleaved caspase-3 was associated with shorter disease-free survival (DFS) in OTSCC patients with moderate differentiation and lymph node invasion. Combination of either positive cleaved caspase-3 or higher caspase-3 expression or both was associated with poor DFS. Interestingly, stratification analysis showed that co-expression levels of positive cleaved caspase-3 or/and higher caspase-3 were associated with better disease-specific survival in patients with advanced stages of the disease, such as large tumor size and lymph node invasion, whereas it was associated with poor DFS in OTSCC patients with moderate cell differentiation and small tumor size. Taken together, cleaved caspase-3 and caspase-3/8/9 could be biomarkers for tumorigenesis in OTSCC patients. The co-expression level of cleaved caspase-3 and caspase-3 might be a prognostic biomarker for OTSCC patients, particular in those patients with certain tumor stages and cell differentiation status.

A bioinformatics study of autophagy biomarkers associated with the prognosis of endometrial carcinoma

“…Jia Lin et al found that CASP3 polymorphisms confer to the lung cancer susceptibility [26]. In human cancer treatment, several studies reported that patients with higher levels of procaspase-3 or active caspase-3 had a worse prognosis than patients with lower levels of procaspase-3 or active caspase-3 [27][28][29][30]. In this study, CASP3 as a central gene also showed its abnormal expression in EC development, and this finding can guide future exploration of EC mechanisms.…”

Astragaloside IV (AS-IV) alleviates the malignant biological behavior of hepatocellular carcinomaviaWnt/β-catenin signaling pathway

“…30 Accordingly, caspase-3 and caspase-9 played key role in apoptosis and were closely related to the progression and prognosis of carcinomatosis, also could be used as bio-markers for oncogenesis in oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC). 31 In this study, our results showed that the AS-IV treatment signicantly reduced the cell proliferation and induced apoptosis, and the levels of cleaved-caspase-3 and cleaved-caspase-9 increased signicantly in vitro. Therefore, these results, as well as others, indicated that AS-IV had stress effects for inhibiting HCC cell growth and promoting HCC cell apoptosis through initiating functional caspases.…”

Natural Borneol Enhances Paclitaxel‐Induced Apoptosis of ESCC Cells by Inactivation of the PI3K/AKT

“…Previous research showed that mice could not survive when they lacked caspase‐3, revealing caspase‐3 played an important role in physiological development (Mcilwain, Berger, & Mak, ). Furthermore, some studies have proven that the expression level of cleaved caspase‐3 in the tumor tissues increased significantly than that in the adjacent normal tissues (Liu et al., ). Therefore, high expression level of cleaved caspase‐3 in tumor tissues could be a prognostic biomarker for cancer patients (Noble et al., ).…”