Expression patterns of three regulation enzymes in glycolysis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: association with survival

Abstract

Enhanced glycolysis is a common trait of many types of human cancers. This study was to detect the expression pattern of three regulatory enzymes during glycolysis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and to investigate their correlation with patients' outcome based on banked pathology material. A total of 141 surgically resected specimens of primary ESCC patients without prior treatments were retrospectively recruited from the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical College Hospital from 2007 to 2009. Expression of HK1, PFKB, and PKM2 in ESCC specimens was analyzed by immunohistochemical staining and Western blotting analysis. HK1-shRNA was used to knock down HK1 expression in ESCC cells, and the functional significance was assessed by CCK8 assay. It was found that the expression of two glycolytic enzymes, HK1 and PKM2, was associated with disease progression, invasion, and poor survival of patients with ESCC. Silence of HK1-inhibited cell proliferation in vitro and suppressed phospho-S6 kinase expression. Our findings suggest that activation of key enzymes in glycolysis might serve as potential therapeutic targets and/or prognostic factors for patients with ESCC.

Immunohistochemical prognostic markers of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: a systematic review

“…Four original studies consistently elucidated the prognostic value of PKM2 expression for poor clinical outcome [ 17 , 24 , 95 , 96 ], with the prognostic significance confirmed by multivariate analysis in 3 original studies [ 17 , 95 , 96 ]. These findings provide evidence of the significance of PKM2 expression as a prognostic biomarker in ESCC.…”

Glycolysis-associated enzymes existing in the follicular lumen of the thyroid may interfere with energy metabolism

“…The band with 60 kDa MW was BSA, and the other bands were swine TG, enolase, pyruvate kinase and phosphoglyceraldehyde dehydrogenase. Among these five proteins, BSA served as a positive control protein that was artificially supplemented, swine TG was previously shown to be present in the follicular lumen, and the other three proteins were key glycolysis-associated enzymes, which have previously been identified to be critical in anaerobic glycolysis of glucose (13–15). …”

Curcumin inhibits Ec109 cell growth via an AMPK-mediated metabolic switch

“…In the last few years, PKM2 has emerged as a major player in cancer development because it provides a metabolic advantage to cancer cells to utilize phosphor-metabolites upstream of pyruvate as precursors for the synthesis of lipids, amino acids and nucleic acids [19]. Several studies to date have found that increased mRNA expression or protein expression of glycolytic enzymes correlates with esophageal carcinoma cell progression [16]. The deregulation of several glycolytic genes, including GLUT4, HK2, PFKBP3, and PKM2, was determined to be responsible for the reprogramming of glucose metabolism in NPC cells.…”