Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the expression level of human proteasome activator PA28beta subunit (PA28beta) in gastric adenocarcinomas (GA) tissues and investigate its potential role in GA carcinogenesis.
Methods: To investigate the expression profile of PA28beta in patients with GA, we employed immunohistochemistry for detection of 287 cases of paired GA and adjacent non-neoplastic tissues. To evaluate the role of PA28beta in GA cells, we measured cell growth, colony formation, soft agar, and nude mice tumorigenicity assays in MKN-45 GA cells pre- and post-PA28beta transfection.
Results: PA28beta had lower expression in 183 of 287 GA cases compared to paired normal samples (63.76%; P < or = 0.001). Decreased expression was dependent on histological type, TNM stage, and differentiation grade. Significantly decreased expression was correlated with a diffuse histological type (88/116, 75.86%) compared to an intestinal type (84/152, 55.26%; P < or = 0.001), with advanced TNM stages (T3: 44/59, 74.58%; T4:25/32, 78.13%) compared to earlier stages (T1: 25/47, 53.19%; T2: 90/149, 60.40%; P = 0.004), and poorer differentiation grade (poor: 68/90, 75.56%) compared to a higher grade (high: 9/18, 50%, moderate: 74/134, 55.22%) (P = 0.006). Over-expression of PA28beta inhibited cell growth, proliferation, and tumorigenicity of MKN-45 GA cells.
Conclusions: These results indicated that PA28beta might participate in the origin and progression of GA cancer through changes to cell proliferation activity and tumorigenicity. Therefore, PA28beta might be a novel biomarker for GA.