Open Access

ARTICLE

An in vitro study to explore the role of prolylcarboxypeptidase in non-small cell lung cancer

Binbin QIAN¹, Xiaoduo LIU², Xiaolin GU¹, Lu YANG³, Dake CHEN^1,*

1 Department of Oncology, Nantong Tongzhou People’s Hospital, Nantong, 226300, China
2 Department of Laboratory Medicine, Nantong Tongzhou People’s Hospital, Nantong, 226300, China
3 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Nantong Tongzhou People’s Hospital, Nantong, 226300, China

* Address correspondence to: Dake Chen,

BIOCELL 2020, 44(1), 19-26. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2020.07859

Issue published 01 March 2020

Abstract

Prolylcarboxypeptidase (PRCP) belongs to the S28 family of proteases, which is also a dipeptidyl peptidase. In this study, we demonstrate the expression pattern of PRCP in Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We found that the repression of PRCP expression by small interfering RNA successfully inhibited cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. Further, we explored the involvement of PRCP in the regulation of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The epithelial marker E-cadherin was significantly increased, meanwhile mesenchymal markers MUC1, vimentin, and SNAIL were markedly decreased in PRCP knockdown cells. Moreover, the downregulation of PRCP in the NSCLC cells induced the expression of apoptosis-related proteins in vitro. We performed RT-PCR in 30 pairs of clinical NSCLC tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues, which revealed significantly higher PRCP expression levels in cancer tissues than in adjacent non-cancerous tissues. Collectively the results from our study suggest a possible cancer promotion role of PRCP in NSCLC.

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