Pancreas 2015-03-01

The potential role of the glycoprotein osteoactivin/glycoprotein nonmetastatic melanoma protein B in pancreatic cancer.

Carolina Torres, Ana Linares, Maria Jose Alejandre, Rogelio Palomino-Morales, Miguel Martin, Juan Ramon Delgado, Joquina Martinez, Sonia Perales

Index: Pancreas 44(2) , 302-10, (2015)

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Abstract

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is still one of the deadliest solid cancers so the finding of new therapeutic approaches and novel targets are of utmost importance. Glycoprotein nonmetastatic melanoma protein B (GPNMB), initially termed glycoprotein nonmetastatic gene B and also named osteoactivin (OA), is a type 1 transmembrane protein that has been recently found to play a role in cancer cell proliferation, angiogenesis, and invasion. Due to its potential responsibility in cancer aggressiveness, the main objective of this work was to assess the role of GPNMB/OA in human pancreatic cancer.Using the human pancreatic cancer cell line Panc-1 in vitro, the effects of GPNMB on growth, proliferation, and invasion were tested by BrdU uptake, cell cycle and Annexin V-FITC analysis, RT-PCR, protein expression, and invasion chamber assays.Our results showed that GPNMB/OA protein expression prevents cells from apoptosis-enhancing proliferation and represents a novel modulator of the invasion and metastasis in pancreatic cancer cells.Due to its main membrane localization in cancer cells and its role in the aggressiveness of pancreatic cancer, GPNMB/OA could represent a novel targeted therapy for pancreatic cancer being attractive for antibody-based therapies.