Correlation between the expression of WAF1 and the tumor growth in human pancreatic cancer

1998 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 09671342
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Digestive surgery
• Research Institution: Tokyo Women's Medical University
• Principal Investigator: HARADA Nobuhiko Tokyo Women's Medical University, School of Medicine Assistant Professor, 医学部, 助手 (10198921)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): IMAIZUMI Toshihide Tokyo Women's Medical University, School of Medicine Assosiate Professor, 医学部, 助教授 (10075377)
• Project Period (FY): 1997 – 1998
• Keywords: pancreatic cancer / p53 / p21 / WAF1 / prognosis

Research Abstract

Sixty-two resected specimens of human ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas were investigated on p53 and p21WAF1 immunohistochemically and genetically by RT-PCR.Also correlation between the expression of p53 or p21WAF1 and the prognosis of the patients were studied. Twenty frozen specimens of pancreatic cancer tissue and 6 pancreatic cancer cell lines were checked up by Westernblot and RT-PCR.In immunohistochemistry, 37% of the patients showed p53 positive and 48% showed p21WAF1 positive. Wild-type p53 significantly correlated not only with p21WAF1 protein expression (p <0.03) but also with WAF1 mRNA expression (p <0.005). The mean survival time was 16 months in the patients with p53(-), 10.5 months in p53(+), 12 months in p2l(-) and 15 months in p2l(+). Both WAF1 protein and mRNA were detected only in the pancreatic cancer cell lines with wild-type p53 but not in those with mutant-p53. In pancreatic cancer, wild-type p53 corresponds significantly to the WAF1 expression and this correlations more closely on the mRNA level than on the protein level.Our data suggest a tendency for the tumors expressing mutant-p53 and not expressing p21WAF1 to grow faster.