Abstract
Catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) is an enzyme involved in estrogen metabolism. Proteomic and immunoproteomic screens suggested COMT might be an immunogenic membrane antigen in human pancreatic cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate the dynamic expression of COMT in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and noncancerous pancreatic tissue, and to determine the relationship between COMT expression and clinicopathologic parameters. COMT expression was analyzed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and western blot in five pancreatic cell lines and five pairs of PDAC and noncancerous pancreatic tissue. Immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate COMT expression in tissue microarrays and 20 cases of paraffin-embedded clinical specimens. The results indicated that COMT expression was detected in AsPC-1, BxPC-3, MIA PaCa-2, Capan-1 and SW1990 pancreatic cell lines, and in five pairs of PDAC and noncancerous pancreatic tissue, at the mRNA and protein levels. Immunohistochemistry analysis revealed that COMT expression was significantly higher in PDAC than in nonmalignant pancreatic tissue. High expression of COMT significantly correlated to early T stages. Therefore, we conclude that COMT might serve as a potential biomarker for applied clinical pathology in PDAC.
Highlights
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, and the death rate in females has increased in the last decade [1]
We aimed to investigate the expression of catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) in pancreatic cancer cell lines, human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and nonmalignant pancreatic tissue, and to address the correlation between COMT expression and the clinicopathologic parameters
reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) results showed that COMT was amplified as a fragment of 388 bp in all five pancreatic cancer cell lines (Figure 1A)
Summary
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, and the death rate in females has increased in the last decade [1]. The best marker available is carbohydrate antigen 19-9, which has a sensitivity of approximately 80% and is not adequate for screening purposes, for the diagnosis of localized, resectable pancreatic cancers [4,5]. In our previous studies [6,7], we screened membrane proteins from pancreatic cancer cell lines using two-dimensional electrophoresis, and performed immunoblotting with these proteins and serum IgG purified from clinically collected sera of pancreatic cancer patients. Proteomic and immunoproteomic results suggested that catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) might be a candidate immunogenic membrane antigen in human pancreatic cancer. Based on these findings, we became interested in the expression and function of COMT in pancreatic cancer.
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