Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea.
Anticancer Res. 2012 Sep;32(9):4091-6.
The role of autophagy in tumor development is paradoxical. Although some genetic evidence has indicated that autophagy has as a tumor suppressor function, it also provides some advantages to tumors under metabolic stress conditions. Autophagy is regulated by several autophagy-related gene (ATG) proteins. In mammals, 16 different ATG genes have been identified. To investigate the clinicopathological role of ATG5 in colorectal cancer, we firstly investigated its expression in patients with sporadic colorectal cancer. Expression analysis revealed ATG5 to be strongly down-regulated in colorectal cancer (38/40 patients). Interestingly, immunohistochemical analysis of colorectal cancer tissues indicated that increased ATG5 expression is associated with lymphovascular invasion (p=0.035). The findings in our limited clinical cohort indicate that ATG5 could be a potential prognostic or diagnostic biomarker.
自噬在肿瘤发展中的作用具有矛盾性。虽然一些遗传证据表明自噬具有肿瘤抑制功能，但它也为代谢应激条件下的肿瘤提供了一些优势。自噬受几种自噬相关基因（ATG）蛋白的调节。在哺乳动物中，已经鉴定出 16 种不同的 ATG 基因。为了研究 ATG5 在结直肠癌中的临床病理作用，我们首先研究了其在散发性结直肠癌患者中的表达。表达分析显示，ATG5 在结直肠癌中强烈下调（40 例患者中有 38 例）。有趣的是，结直肠癌组织的免疫组化分析表明，ATG5 的表达增加与血管淋巴管侵犯有关（p=0.035）。我们有限的临床队列研究结果表明，ATG5 可能是一种有潜力的预后或诊断生物标志物。
