Functional analysis of bladder cancer-related protein gene: a putative cervical cancer tumor suppressor gene in cervical carcinoma.

Our previous study has suggested thatthe bladder cancer-associated protein gene (BLCAP) was among the differentially expressed genes in cervical cancer. We confirm here that BLCAP is expressed in all noncancerous cervical tissues (10/10), but it is greatly lost in primary cervical cancer tissue (31/39). In order to further investigate the functional roles of BLCAP, we stably transfected BLCAP cDNA into HeLa cells. The HeLa cells expressing BLCAP show reduced cell growth and clone genicity compared to the vector-transfected cognate cells. BLCAP expression in HeLa cells leads to growth arrest and significantly enhanced apoptosis in vitro and reduced tumor formation in vivo. Thus, BLCAP might be a potential tumor suppressor gene in cervical carcinoma.