| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,600,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥2,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Generally, it is well-known that the women patients bearing advanced cervical cancer have poor prognosis inspite of present medical therapies such as operation, radiation and chemotherapy. Therefore, it is important to clarify the unknown molecular mechanism of cervical cancer progression so as to develop a novel therapeutic approach. The aim of this study is to investigate expression and function of squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCCA) and maspin, which belong to the serine proteinase inhibitor (serpin) family, in cervical squamous cell carcinoma.
1.Novel analytical method using electrophoresis with newly raised polyclonal antibody against SCCA peptide, PabY2,revealed that there are some distinct expression patterns of SCCA between normal and malignant squamous cell epithelium of the uterine cervix.
2.It was found that SCCA stimulates matrix-metalloproteinase-9 production in cervical squamous carcinoma cells and promotes tumor cell invasion, indicating that abundant secreted SCCA might affect the malignant property of cervical cancer cells in autocrine or paracrine mechanisms. This data might be why high serum values of SCCA are related with a poor prognosis of stages Ib-II cervical cancer patients as reported previously.
3.Electrophoretic analysis revealed that maspin, which was first discovered as mammary tumor suppressor serpin, is also down-regulated in cervical squamous cell carcinoma compared with normal squamous cell epithelium.
In conclusion, it was demonstrated that SCCA expression pattern is apparently changed in cervical cancer, and also that maspin is down-regulated in cervical cancer. Further investigation of the biological functions of these functional serpin proteins might lead the novel insights into molecular mechanism of tumor progression of cervical squamous cell carcinoma.
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