Department of Dermatology, University Medical Center Regensburg, Franz-Josef-Strauß-Allee 11, 93053 Regensburg, Germany.
Center for Clinical Studies, University Medical Center Regensburg, Franz-Josef-Strauß-Allee 11, 93053 Regensburg, Germany.
Int J Mol Sci. 2023 Jan 5;24(2):1037. doi: 10.3390/ijms24021037.
TRPCs (transient receptor potential classical or cation channels) play a crucial role in tumor biology, especially in the Ca homeostasis in cancer cells. TRPC4 is a pH-sensitive member of this family of proteins. As solid tumors exhibit an inversed pH-gradient with lowered extracellular and increased intracellular pH, both contributing to tumor progression, TRPC4 might be a signaling molecule in the altered tumor microenvironment. This is the first study to investigate the expression profiles of TRPC4 in common skin cancers such as basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), malignant melanoma (MM) and nevus cell nevi (NCN). We found that all SCCs, NCNs, and MMs show positive TRPC4-expression, while BCCs do only in about half of the analyzed samples. These data render TRPC4 an immunohistochemical marker to distinguish SCC and BCC, and this also gives rise to future studies investigating the role of TRPC4 in tumor progression, and especially metastasis as BCCs very rarely spread and are mostly negative for TRPC4.
瞬时受体电位经典或阳离子通道（TRPCs）在肿瘤生物学中起着至关重要的作用，特别是在癌细胞中的钙稳态中。TRPC4 是该蛋白家族中对 pH 敏感的成员。由于实体瘤表现出反向 pH 梯度，细胞外 pH 值降低，细胞内 pH 值升高，这两者都有助于肿瘤的进展，因此 TRPC4 可能是改变的肿瘤微环境中的信号分子。这是第一项研究 TRPC4 在常见皮肤癌中的表达谱的研究，如基底细胞癌（BCC）、鳞状细胞癌（SCC）、恶性黑色素瘤（MM）和痣细胞痣（NCN）。我们发现所有的 SCC、NCN 和 MM 均显示 TRPC4 阳性表达，而 BCC 仅在分析的部分样本中呈阳性。这些数据使 TRPC4 成为一种免疫组织化学标志物，可用于区分 SCC 和 BCC，这也促使未来的研究调查 TRPC4 在肿瘤进展中的作用，特别是转移作用，因为 BCC 很少扩散，并且大多数 TRPC4 呈阴性。
