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Expression of PDK1 in malignant pheochromocytoma as a new promising potential therapeutic target

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Abstract

Purpose

Phosphoinositide-dependent kinase 1 (PDK1) is highly expressed in many solid tumors. And several studies have demonstrated that PDK1 has been an emerging and promising target for anti-cancer therapies. However, the role of PDK1 has not been studied so far in malignant pheochromocytoma (PCC).

Methods

In this study, immunohistochemical staining was performed to investigate the protein level of PDK1 in 63 PCC tissue samples, of which 49 were benign and 14 were malignant. In addition, we evaluated the effect of inhibition of PDK1 with siRNA on cell growth, apoptosis and invasive capacity in PC12 cells and identified the underlying mechanisms.

Results

We found that PDK1 was overexpressed in malignant PCC tissues, and knockdown of PDK1 with siRNA significantly inhibited cell proliferation, increased apoptosis induction, and attenuated cell migration and invasive capacity in PC12 cells. We also showed that knockdown of PDK1 significantly reduced the phosphorylation of Akt at threonine 308 (p-Akt T308) but did not alter the serine phosphorylation of Akt on the S473 site (p-Akt S473). Furthermore, we found that the p-Akt expression was noticeably decreased after knockdown of PDK1, but the t-Akt expression did not show a significant decrease.

Conclusion

We have demonstrated for the first time that PDK1 is overexpressed in human malignant PCC and plays an important role in the malignant biological behaviors of PC12 cell. Specifically, we have revealed that knockdown of PDK1 could attenuate activation of the Akt signaling. These data suggest that PDK1 could be a new promising potential therapeutic target in human cancer treatment for malignant PCC.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Huashan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81502315).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urology, Huashan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    X. Zhang

  2. Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Z. Yu

Authors
  1. X. Zhang
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  2. Z. Yu
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Contributions

ZY conceived and designed the experiments. XZ performed the experiments. ZY coordinated the research and analyzed the data. XZ wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Z. Yu.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was in accordance with the ethical standards and was approved by The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University.

Ethical statement

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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The datasets generated and/or analysed during this study are available from the first author and corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Zhang, X., Yu, Z. Expression of PDK1 in malignant pheochromocytoma as a new promising potential therapeutic target. Clin Transl Oncol 21, 1312–1318 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12094-019-02055-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12094-019-02055-5

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