High expression of PIWIL2 promotes tumor cell proliferation, migration and predicts a poor prognosis in glioma

Abstract

Piwi-like RNA-mediated gene silencing 2 (PIWIL2), has been reported as an oncogene tightly associated with the genesis and progression of various malignancies. Nevertheless, the function of the PIWIL2 protein in human gliomas has not yet been clarified. In this study, we sought to investigate the clinical significance of PIWIL2 expression and reveal its function in the pathological process of gliomas. Through western blot and immunohistochemical analyses we found that PIWIL2 was overexpressed in glioma tissues. Moreover, the expression level of PIWIL2 was also significantly correlated with the WHO grades of human gliomas and Ki-67 expression. Kaplan‑Meier curves indicated that PIWIL2 was a prognostic factor for the survival of glioma patients and a high expression of PIWIL2 was correlated with a poor prognosis. In vitro, knockdown of PIWIL2 in glioma cells was shown to induce cell cycle arrest and increase apoptosis. Furthermore, silencing of PIWIL2 expression also obviously suppressed the migration of glioma cells. All the results demonstrated that PIWIL2 plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of human gliomas and may be used as a potential diagnostic marker and a therapeutic target of glioma in the future.

The emerging role of the piRNA/piwi complex in cancer

“…PIWIL2 is highly expressed in glioma and correlates with poor patient prognosis. In vivo, PIWIL2 knockdown in glioma cells induces cell cycle arrest, increases apoptosis, and inhibits glioma cell migration [111]. The human papilloma virus (HPV) oncoproteins E6 and E7 can reactivate PIWIL2 during cervical cancer (CC) tumorigenesis, with Piwil2 over-expression inducing H3K9 acetylation but reducing H3K9 trimethylation, which contributes to epigenetic reprogramming and embryonic stem cell (ESC) signature maintenance.…”

Novel sphingomyelin biomarkers for brain glioma and associated regulation research on the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway

“…Protein and lipid are two types of diagnostic biomarkers for glioma (6)(7)(8). Biomarkers may be identified from patient samples, including serum, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and glioma cells (9).…”

A Comprehensive Molecular and Clinical Analysis of the piRNA Pathway Genes in Ovarian Cancer

“…A number of studies reported that increased expression of piRNA pathway genes contributed to the metastatic progression of various cancers, including OC [56,[59][60][61][62]. Limited information is available on OC and while knockdown of pathway genes has been linked to decreased malignancy in vitro, overexpression analysis in OC surprisingly revealed decreased invasion [25,[56][57][58].…”