Takebumi Usui

Gasdermin (GSDM or GSDMA), expressed in the upper gastrointestinal tract but frequently silenced in gastric cancers (GCs), regulates apoptosis of the gastric epithelium. It has three human homologs, GSDMB, GSDMC, and GSDMD (GSDM family) and they are considered to be involved in the regulation of epithelial apoptosis but not yet known. We investigated the expression pattern of the family genes in the upper gastrointestinal epithelium and cancers. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction revealed that, unlike GSDMA expressed in differentiated cells, GSDMB is expressed in proliferating cells and GSDMD in differentiating cells. GSDMC, meanwhile, is expressed in both differentiating and differentiated cells. Colony formation assay showed that GSDMB, closely related to GSDMA, has no cell-growth inhibition activity in gastric cancer cells, and that GSDMC and GSDMD, respectively, exhibit the activity with different strengths from that of GSDMA. Expression analyses of the four family genes in esophageal and GCs suggested that GSDMC and GSDMD as well as GSDMA are tumor suppressors and that GSDMB, which was amplified and overexpressed in some GCs, could be an oncogene. The results of the expression analysis and colony formation assay suggest that each family gene may have a distinct function in the upper gastrointestinal epithelium.

Although Runt-related transcription factors RUNXs (RUNX1-3) have a high similarity in their structure, only RUNX3 is known to be involved in gastric carcinogenesis. First, we examined mRNA expression of these three RUNX genes in the gastric mucosa, and, finding only RUNX2 was not expressed there, we further investigated RUNX1 and RUNX3 expression in three regions including the pit, isthmus/neck, and gland regions of the human normal stomach and whether RUNX1 is involved in gastric carcinogenesis. The mRNA expression of RUNX1 and RUNX3 was examined by use of the three regions isolated by laser-captured microdissection (LCM) and by use of primary gastric cancer tissues. Furthermore, RUNX1 mutational analysis was performed in the cancer cells, which also were isolated from 44 paraffin-embedded gastric cancer tissues by LCM. RUNX1 was co-expressed with RUNX3 in the pit region, and has cell growth-inhibition activity similar to RUNX3. RUNX3 has been reported to be suppressed by DNA methylation in a subset of gastric cancers; however, the expression of RUNX1 mRNA was observed in all of the gastric cancer cell lines and gastric cancer tissues that we examined. No RUNX1 mutation was found in the 44 gastric cancer patients. Although RUNX1 is similar to RUNX3 in both the expression pattern in the stomach and its cell growth-inhibition activity, RUNX1 is not involved in most cases of gastric cancers. These results suggest that the transcriptional target genes are different between these two family genes.