Deregulation of MTDH gene expression in gastric cancer

Abstract

Aim: Gastric cancer is the third most frequent cause of cancer mortality worldwide. In Iran, it is one of the leading causes at the national level. Localized at chromosome 8q22, the human MTDH gene has been reported to be over-expressed in a spectrum of malignancies. However, since there is a lack of data concerning with expression in gastric cancer at the transcriptional level, in this study we evaluated MTDH expression in Iranian cases.

Methods: Totally, thirty paired gastric samples were examined by quantitative real-time RT-PCR.

Results: Although the mRNA expression was significantly elevated in 46.6% of the examined tumor tissues; its expression was low in others (36.6%). Moreover, there was only a marginal statistical difference between the MTDH gene expression of all tumor specimens compared to their paired non-tumor ones and no statistically significant association with the grades and types of the tumors.

Conclusion: Taken together, our results demonstrated that expression of MTDH at the transcriptional level may be increased in gastric cancer tissue samples but with considerable heterogeneity. Due to this, it may have the potential to be used as a target for diagnostic/therapeutic purposes only in a subset of patients.