The expression pattern of APC2 and APC7 in various cancer cell lines and AML patients

Purpose: Anaphase promoting complex (APC/C) is an E3 ligase enzyme, which ubiquinates various proteins involved in the cell cycle. This protein complex may have a pivotal role in the cell cycle control affecting pathological conditions such as cancer. APC7 and APC2 subunits of the APC/C complex are involved in the substrate recognition and the catalytic reaction, respectively.

Materials and methods: In this study, quantitative Real-time PCR was used to analyse APC2 and APC7 expression in different cancer cell lines as well as AML patient's blood cells.

Results: The results showed that APC2 and APC7 subunits were both over expressed in cancer cell lines (p=0.008). The mean expression ratio of APC2 and APC7 in different cancer cells were 2.60±0.22 and 4.83±0.11, respectively. An increase in expression of APC2 and APC7 was seen among 12 out of 14 AML patients (85%). There was a significant positive correlation between APC2 upregulation and the detection of splenomegaly in the patients (r=0.808, p=0.001).

Conclusion: This was the first study suggesting that APC/C upregulation may contribute to the pathogenesis of cancer and can be used as a molecular biomarker to predict the progression and the prognosis of AML.