Expression of cytochrome P450 2A13 in human non-small cell lung cancer and its clinical significance

Lung cancer is one of the most important causes of cancer-related mortality worldwide. Human cytochrome P450 2A13 enzyme （CYP2A13） is predominantly expressed in the respiratory tract and could catalyze various carcinogens. In this study, we quantified CYP2A13 expression in non-small cell lung cancer （NSCLC） tissues and examined the relation between CYP2A13 and clinicopathologic factors. Thirty-five paired lung cancer and normal tissues were studied for the expression of the CYP2A13 gene by using real-time PCR and Western blot- ting assays. We also investigated the relationship between CYP2A13 expression and clinicopathologic factors such as age, gender, histology and lymph node status in tumor tissues. SPSS （17.0） statistical software was applied for data analysis. The real-time PCR results showed that there was no significant difference in the CYP2A13 mRNA transcript levels between tumor and paired normal tissues in the 35 samples and in 12 paired squamous cell car- cinomas. In adenocarcinoma, the expression of CYP2A13 mRNA in tumor tissues was 12.5% of that in adjacent tissues （P 〈 0.05） and it was not associated with age, gender, histology and lymph node status of the patients. The amounts of CYP2A13 proteins detected by Western blotting assays correlated well with those of the correspond- ing mRNAs. In conclusion, the expression of CYP2A13 was downregulated in lung adenocarcinoma. CYP2A13 may be involved in the development and progression of lung adenocarcinoma.

Influences of V5-epitope tag on the metabolic activation of AFB1 by human cytochrome P450 2A13

Objective： To explore the impact of V5-epitope tag inserted in the commercial pcDNA5/FRT/V5-His TOPO expression vector on the metabolic activation of AFB1 by human CYP2A13. Methods ： A C-terminal 6 × Histag was first introduced into CYP2A13 cDNA by PCR and subsequently transferred into the expressing vector pcDNA5/FRT. Another commercial pcDNA5/FRT/V5-His TOPO expression vector was used to develop the construct directly via PCR. Both of the constructs were then transfected into Flp-In CHO and allowed for the stable expression of CYP2A13. The mouse CYP2A5 and the vector alone were used as positive and negative control, respectively. The presence of CYP2A5 and CYP2A13 cDNA and their protein expression in the stable transfectant cells were deterrrfined by immunoblotting assay using a monoclonal antibody against 6 × Histag. The AFBl-induced cytotoxicity in these tranfected CHO cells were conducted by MTS assay and the IC50 of cell viability was used to compare the CYP enzyme metabolic activity in AFB1 metabolism among these cells. Results： In accordance with the Flp-In system working mechanism, all the transfectant cells presented same protein expression level. The CHO cells expressing CYP2A5 was more sensitive to AFB1 treatment than those cells expressing CYP2A13, there was about 30-fold ICs0 difference between the two cells （2.1 nmol/L vs 58 nmol/L）. Interestingly, CYP2A13 fused with V5-Histag had the lost of metabolic activity to AFB1 than that fused with Histag alone, the ICa, of the viability in CHO-2A13-His-V5 cells was about 20-fold less than CHO-2A13- His （〉 1 000 nmol/L vs 58 nmol/L）. However, there was no change between CYP2A5 fused with V5-Histag and Histag alone （2.4 nmol/L vs 2.1 nmol/L）. Conclusion： The results demonstrate that CYP2A13 fused with V5-epitope has a significant impact on its metabolic activation to AFB1, which indicated that it should be careful to select a new expressing vector for evaluating the enzyme activity in carcinogen metabolism.