Upregulation of Autophagy-Related Gene-5

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 9; no. 10
• Main Authors: Ge, Jie, Chen, Zihua, Huang, Jin, Chen, Jinxiang, Yuan, Weijie, Deng, Zhenghao, Chen, Zhikang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science 17.10.2014
• Subjects: Adjuvant chemotherapy; Anthracyclines; Cancer; Cancer genetics; Drug resistance; Genes; Genetic aspects; Stomach cancer
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110293

Autophagy-related gene-5 (ATG-5) is one of the key regulators of autophagic cell death. It has been widely regarded as a protective molecular mechanism for tumor cells during the course of chemotherapy. In the present study, we investigated the expression pattern of ATG-5 and multidrug resistance-associated protein-1 (MRP-1) in 135 gastric cancers (GC) patients who were treated with epirubicin, cisplatin and 5-FU adjuvant chemotherapy (ECF) following surgical resection and explored their potential clinical significance. We found that both ATG-5 (77.78%) and MRP-1 (79.26%) were highly expressed in GC patients. ATG-5 expression was significantly associated with depth of wall invasion, TNM stages and distant metastasis of GC (P<0.05), whereas MRP-1 expression was significantly linked with tumor size, depth of wall invasion, lymph node metastasis, TNM stages and differentiation status (P<0.05). ATG-5 expression was positively correlated with MRP-1 (rp = 0.616, P<0.01). Increased expression of ATG-5 and MPR-1 was significantly correlated with poor overall survival (OS; P<0.01) and disease free survival (DFS; P<0.01) of our GC cohort. Furthermore, we demonstrated that ATG-5 was involved in drug resistant of GC cells, which was mainly through regulating autophagy. Our data suggest that upregulated expression of ATG-5, an important molecular feature of protective autophagy, is associated with chemoresistance in GC. Expression of ATG-5 and MRP-1 may be independent prognostic markers for GC treatment.