Su1166 Pax9 is Critical for Esophageal Epithelial Development

Abstract

Background and Aims: Autophagy is a normal physiological mechanism for the degradation of cellular proteins and organelles. Excessive autophagy induced by cellular stress leads to cell death. However, the exact role of autophagy in cancer is not completely clear. Beclin1 plays a central role in the regulation of autophagy. The major goal of our study was to evaluate the role of Beclin-1 and autophagy and the effect of bile acids in the esophageal carcinogenesis. Barrett's esophagus (BE) is a premalignant lesion of distal esophagus associated with an increased risk for the development of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). Methods: Beclin-1 expression was evaluated using immunohistochemistry, immunoblotting, or RTPCR in (1) biopsies obtained from 62 patients with BE or EAC, (2) tissues from a rat model of BE and EAC, and (3) esophageal cell lines. Since reflux of bile acids is important in esophageal carcinogenesis, the effect of acute and chronic exposure to deoxycholic acid (DCA) on autophagy and Beclin-1 expression was evaluated. Autophagy was assessed by electron microscopy or by transfection with GFP-LC3 plasmid and calculating the percentage of GFP-LC3 positive cells with punctuate pattern. Results: Our studies using human biopsies and rat tissues showed that Beclin-1 expression was high in squamous epithelium, while its expression was low in BE and EAC. A similar pattern was observed in esophageal cell lines. HET-1A cells (derived from normal squamous epithelium) showed high levels of Beclin-1, but lower levels of Beclin-1 were found in BE cells (CP-A, CP-C) and EAC cells (OE33 cells). Acute exposure to DCA led to increased Beclin-1 expression and increased autophagy in CP-A cells. In contrast, chronic exposure to DCA did not result in any alteration of Beclin-1 or autophagy. To demonstrate that Beclin-1 plays central role in autophagy we used siRNA to decrease Beclin-1 expression and then autophagy was evaluated after treatment with DCA. No increase in autophagy was detected compared to untreated control CP-A cells. Conclusions: In summary, our data suggests that autophagy is initially activated in response to bile acids, but chronic exposure to bile acids leads to decreased Beclin-1 expression and autophagy resistance. We propose that autophagy resistance in combination with apoptosis resistance induced by chronic exposure to bile acids contributes to EAC development.