Expression levels of autophagy related proteins and their prognostic significance in retinocytoma and retinoblastoma

·AIM: To discuss the prognostic significant of autophagy related proteins(ARPs) in retinoblastoma(RB)and to find the molecular marker to distinguish retinocytoma(RC) and RB by investigating the different expression profiling of microtubule-associated protein light chain 3(LC3B) and other ARPs in RC and RB.·METHODS: Specimens with retinocytoma region(RCR)or mainly composed with Flexner-Winterstein rosettes(FWR) were screen out from 219 paraffin-embedded RB samples and respectively taken as RCR group and FWR group. Others were taken as undifferentiated(UD) group.Immunochemistry(IHC) of LC3 B and electronic microscopy was used to identify autophagy. The IHC scores of LC3 B and other ARPs, such as Beclin, PTEN,p27, p16INK4 a, mTOR and BCL-2 were compared and correlation analysis was applied to find potential proteins which may involve in autophagy regulation. The prognostics significance of LC3 B was evaluated by comparing the high risk features(HRFs) in 3 groups of total 219 samples.·RESULTS: Twenty-one specimens with RCR and 36 specimens mainly composed with FWR were screen out.RCR cell had a high level of LC3 B and lots of autophagic vacuoles. Beclin, PTEN, p27 had positive correlation with LC3, and p16INK4 ahad negative correlation, while the expression of mTOR and BCL-2 in RCR and RB region did not show any difference. Cases with RCR had lower rate of HRFs than undifferentiated cases.·CONCLUSION: ARPs had different expression pattern between RCR and other pathological types of RB, and could be ideal markers to distinguish RC from RB. Our finding indicated cases with RCR had favorable prognosis just like those with FWR.

Autophagy related protein 9A increase in hepatitis B virusassociated hepatocellular carcinoma and the role in apoptosis

The majority of hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC)cases are associated with the hepatitis B virus(HBV)infection.Autophagy related protein 9A(ATG9A)is a transmembrane protein required for autophagosome formation.In order to investigate the role of ATG9A in HBV-associated HCC,ATG9A protein expression was determined in tumor liver tissues and compared with adjacent nontumor tissues from HCC patients with or without HBV infection.In HBVassociated HCC tissues,ATG9A protein level was increased in tumor liver tissues,but not in cases of non-HBV HCC.Our findings suggested that ATG9A might be involved in HBV and cancer cell survival.Therefore,we aimed to analyze the function of ATG9A in HBV replication using RNA interference to evaluate the HBV DNA level using real-time PCR.In the present study,there were no significant differences between shATG9A-transfected HepG2.2.15 cells and the mock control.However,we found that silencing ATG9A affected apoptosis in HepG2.2.15 and HepG2 cell lines.Our results indicated that ATG9A might be partly involved in the survival of HCC.Thus,the inhibition of ATG9A together with other targets might be a potential drug target for HCC treatment.