Downregulation of PTPN18 can inhibit proliferation and metastasis and promote apoptosis of endometrial cancer

Abstract

Endometrial cancer is one of the chief culprits threatening women's lives. Although numerous epidemiological experiments have been carried out into the aetiology of endometrial cancer, the cause of the disease has been unclear up to now. In recent years, PTPN18, a member of the protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTP) family predicted to be tumour suppressors or oncogenes, has been confirmed to participate in the occurrence and progression of many cancers. Few studies, however, have explained the role in the endometrial cancer. So, it caught our attention to explore if PTPN18 participates in and plays a regulatory role in the proliferation, apoptosis, and metastasis of endometrial cancer. In our results, we found that PTPN18 was overexpressed in endometrial cancer tissue compared to paracancerous tissue by immunohistochemistry. Not only that, silencing of PTPN18 in endometrial cancer cell lines (HEC-1-A and HEC-1-B) can significantly impair proliferation detected by CCK8 assay and flow cytometry (FCM) analyses and inhibit the metastasis of endometrial cancer cells shown by the scratch test and the Transwell experiment. PTPN18 knockdown can promote the apoptosis of endometrial cancer. In addition, nude mice tumour formation assay confirmed the results in vivo. Although the exact function of PTPN18 in endometrial cancer is unclear, the targeted therapy drugs enhancing PTPN18 may be considered in the future treatment of endometrial carcinoma.

Keywords: PTPN18; cell behaviour; endometrial cancer; knockdown.