PIMREG, a Marker of Proliferation, Facilitates Aggressive Development of Cholangiocarcinoma Cells Partly Through Regulating Cell Cycle-Related Markers

Clinical diagnostic value of PIMREG on liver cancer cell phenotype and tumorigenic ability in nude mice

OBJECTIVES

In vitro experiments were manipulated to investigate the effect of the PIMREG (PICALM-interacting mitotic regulator gene) expression level on the malignant phenotype of liver cancer cells and their tumorigenesis ability in nude mice, and bioinformatics were used to analyze the clinical diagnostic and prognostic value in liver cancer.

METHODS

After liver cancer-related data were obtained from the TCGA database and GTEx database, the differences in PIMREG expression in liver cancer and normal liver tissue were compared using bioinformatics, and their correlation with the clinical pathological characteristics of liver cancer and the prognosis value were analyzed. A knockdown and overexpression model of PIMREG was constructed using Huh7 cells. The effect of the PIMREG expression level on the malignant phenotype of Huh7 cells was tested through CCK-8 and Transwell experiments. At the same time, animal knockdown and overexpression models were constructed to study the effect of the PIMREG expression level on the tumorigenesis ability in nude mice.

RESULTS

Bioinformatics analysis showed that PIMREG mRNA was significantly overexpressed in liver cancer tissue (P<0.001). There were differences in T-staging (P<0.001), pathological staging (P=0.002), vascular infiltration (P<0.001), histological grading (P<0.001), and AFP levels (P<0.001) between the high- and low-expression groups. A high expression of PIMREG is associated with a poor prognosis, manifested as a significant decrease in the overall survival, disease-specific survival, and progression-free survival rates of patients (P values of 0.006, 0.014, and 0.002, respectively). In the PIMREG overexpression model, the proliferation rate and invasion ability of Huh7 cells were significantly increased, and the tumorigenesis ability of nude mice was significantly enhanced. In the knockdown model, the opposite results were observed.

CONCLUSIONS

The PIMREG gene is highly expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma, and increasing its expression level can significantly promote the malignant phenotype of liver cancer cells and their tumorigenesis ability in nude mice. Knocking down its expression level has the opposite effect. The expression level of PIMREG is related to the pathological stages of liver cancer patients, and its elevated expression is a risk factor for poor prognosis. PIMREG may become a new target for the clinical diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis evaluation of liver cancer.

FAM64A aggravates proliferation, invasion, lipid droplet formation, and chemoresistance in gastric cancer: A biomarker for aggressiveness and a gene therapy target

FAM64A is a mitogen-induced regulator of the metaphase and anaphase transition. Here, we found that FAM64A messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein expression levels were higher in gastric cancer tissue than in normal mucosa (p < .05). FAM64A methylation was negatively correlated with FAM64A mRNA expression (p < .05). The differentially expressed genes of FAM64A were mainly involved in digestion, potassium transporting or exchanging ATPase, contractile fibers, endopeptidase, and pancreatic secretion (p < .05). The FAM64A-related genes were principally categorized into ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, cell cycle, chromosome segregation and mitosis, microtubule binding and organization, metabolism of amino acids, cytokine receptors, lipid droplet, central nervous system, and collagen trimer (p < .05). FAM64A protein expression was lower in normal gastric mucosa than intestinal metaplasia, adenoma, and primary cancer (p < .05), negatively correlated with older age, T stage, lymphatic and venous invasion, tumor, node, metastasis stage, and dedifferentiation (p < .05), and associated with a favorable overall survival of gastric cancer patients. FAM64A overexpression promoted proliferation, antiapoptosis, migration, invasion, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition via the EGFR/Akt/mTOR/NF-κB, while the opposite effect was observed for FAM64A knockdown. FAM64A also induced chemoresistance directly or indirectly through lipid droplet formation via ING5. These results suggested that upregulation of FAM64A expression might induce aggressive phenotypes, leading to gastric carcinogenesis and its subsequent progression. Thus, FAM64A could be regarded as a prognosis biomarker and a target for gene therapy.

PIMREG is a prognostic biomarker involved in immune microenvironment of clear cell renal cell carcinoma and associated with the transition from G1 phase to S phase

Background

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is one of the most common tumors in the world and affects human health seriously. PIMREG is a mitotic regulator which is essential to the metaphase-to-anaphase transition in cell cycle. Although PIMREG plays a crucial role in the malignant progression of tumors, there are few reports on its role in ccRCC.

Methods

The transcriptional expression profile and clinical data of PIMREG were downloaded from TCGA database and verified by qRT-PCR. Kaplan-Meier plotter was used to analyze the effect of PIMREG on overall survival (OS), disease specific survival (DSS) and progression-free interval (PFI) of patients with ccRCC. Univariable and multivariable Cox regression analysis were used to determine the independent prognostic factors of ccRCC. The effects of PIMREG on cell migration and invasion were detected by wound healing assay and transwell invasion assay, and CCK-8 assay, colony formation assay and cell cycle assay were used to detect the effect of PIMREG on cell proliferation. In addition, the changes in cell cycle related proteins were detected by western blot.

Results

PIMREG was highly expressed in human ccRCC and was positively correlated with pathologic stage, TNM stage and histologic grade. In addition, patients with high expression of PIMREG had a poor prognosis. Univariable and multivariable Cox regression analysis identified that PIMREG was an independent prognostic factor of ccRCC. Additionally, PIMREG was also closely related to immune cell infiltration. Experiments in vitro identified that the knockdown of PIMREG could significantly inhibit the proliferation, migration and invasion abilities of ccRCC. The expression of cyclin D1, CDK4 and CDK6 was also significantly reduced after PIMREG knockdown.

Conclusions

PIMREG plays a vital role in the development of ccRCC and may become a potential therapeutic target in the future.

Excessive activation of HOXB13/PIMREG axis promotes hepatocellular carcinoma progression and drug resistance

The transcription factor HOXB13 is bound up with the occurrence, progression and drug fast of many kinds of cancer. Nevertheless, the specific molecular mechanism of HOXB13 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is still unknown. This provides an obstacle to the exploration of HCC treatments targeting HOXB13. This study found that HOXB13 was up-regulated in HCC tissues. HOXB13 enhanced the multiplication and metastasis of HCC cells. It enhanced HCC cell drug and anoikis resistance. The analysis of HCC RNA seq data indicated that the expression of HOXB13 and PIMREG were positively correlated. Luciferase report assay showed that HOXB13 could activate PIMREG promoter transcription. The results of RT-qPCR and western blot showed that HOXB13 regulated the transcription of PIMREG. Western blot proved that high expression of PIMREG participated in DNA damage repair and cell cycle regulation by up-regulating RAD51, BRCA1, CDC25A, CDC25B and CDC25C and down-regulating HIPK2. This led to a significant increase in DNA repair capacity, accelerated cell cycle progression, and insensitive to DNA damage. Down-regulation of PIMREG in Hep3B cells overexpressing HOXB13 attenuated the phenotype induced by HOXB13. Therefore, HOXB13 functioned through PIMREG instead of directly regulating the transcription of RAD51, BRCA1, CDC25A, CDC25B and CDC25C. The same results were obtained in vivo. It was concluded that HOXB13 affected the expression of cell cycle and DNA repair related factors by up-regulating the transcription of PIMREG, thereby promoting the progression of HCC and enhancing the resistance of HCC to chemotherapeutics.

Predictive value of PIMREG in the prognosis and response to immune checkpoint blockade of glioma patients

Glioma is the most common primary brain tumor in the human brain. The present study was designed to explore the expression of PIMREG in glioma and its relevance to the clinicopathological features and prognosis of glioma patients. The correlations of PIMREG with the infiltrating levels of immune cells and its relevance to the response to immunotherapy were also investigated. PIMREG expression in glioma was analyzed based on the GEO, TCGA, and HPA databases. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis was used to examine the predictive value of PIMREG for the prognosis of patients with glioma. The correlation between the infiltrating levels of immune cells in glioma and PIMREG was analyzed using the CIBERSORT algorithm and TIMRE database. The correlation between PIMREG and immune checkpoints and its correlation with the patients’ responses to immunotherapy were analyzed using R software and the GEPIA dataset. Cell experiments were conducted to verify the action of PIMREG in glioma cell migration and invasion. We found that PIMREG expression was upregulated in gliomas and positively associated with WHO grade. High PIMREG expression was correlated with poor prognosis of LGG, prognosis of all WHO grade gliomas, and prognosis of recurrent gliomas. PIMREG was related to the infiltration of several immune cell types, such as M1 and M2 macrophages, monocytes and CD8+ T cells. Moreover, PIMREG was correlated with immune checkpoints in glioma and correlated with patients’ responses to immunotherapy. KEGG pathway enrichment and GO functional analysis illustrated that PIMREG was related to multiple tumor- and immune-related pathways. In conclusion, PIMREG overexpression in gliomas is associated with poor prognosis of patients with glioma and is related to immune cell infiltrates and the responses to immunotherapy.

Pan-Cancer Analysis of PIMREG as a Biomarker for the Prognostic and Immunological Role

Phosphatidylinositol binding clathrin assembly protein interacting mitotic regulator (PIMREG) localizes to the nucleus and can significantly elevate the nuclear localization of clathrin assembly lymphomedullary leukocythemia gene. Although there is some evidence to support an important action for PIMREG in the occurrence and development of certain cancers, currently no pan-cancer analysis of PIMREG is available. Therefore, we intended to estimate the prognostic predictive value of PIMREG and to explore its potential immune function in 33 cancer types. By using a series of bioinformatics approaches, we extracted and analyzed datasets from Oncomine, The Cancer Genome Atlas, Cancer Cell Lineage Encyclopedia (CCLE) and the Human Protein Atlas (HPA), to explore the underlying carcinogenesis of PIMREG, including relevance of PIMREG to prognosis, microsatellite instability (MSI), tumor mutation burden (TMB), tumor microenvironment (TME) and infiltration of immune cells in various types of cancer. Our findings indicate that PIMREG is highly expressed in at least 24 types of cancer, and is negatively correlated with prognosis in major cancer types. In addition, PIMREG expression was correlated with TMB in 24 cancers and with MSI in 10 cancers. We revealed that PIMREG is co-expressed with genes encoding major histocompatibility complex, immune activation, immune suppression, chemokine and chemokine receptors. We also found that the different roles of PIMREG in the infiltration of different immune cell types in different tumors. PIMREG can potentially influence the etiology or pathogenesis of cancer by acting on immune-related pathways, chemokine signaling pathway, regulation of autophagy, RIG-I like receptor signaling pathway, antigen processing and presentation, FC epsilon RI pathway, complement and coagulation cascades, T cell receptor pathway, NK cell mediated cytotoxicity and other immune-related pathways. Our study suggests that PIMREG can be applied as a prognostic marker in a variety of malignancies because of its role in tumorigenesis and immune infiltration.

Tumor-promoting function of PIMREG in glioma by activating the β-catenin pathway

Glioma is the most common primary brain tumor in adults with an adverse prognosis and obscure pathogenesis. PICALM interacting mitotic regulator protein (PIMREG) functions as an oncogene in multiple types of cancer, but its function in glioma remains unknown. The Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis 2 (GEPIA2, http://gepia2.cancer-pku.cn/#index) showed that PIMREG expression in the glioma tissues was higher than that in normal brain tissues. Herein, cell counting kit-8 assay and flow cytometry analysis exhibited that overexpression of PIMREG significantly promoted the proliferation of glioma cells and the transition from G1 phase of the cell cycle to S phase. Wound-healing and transwell assays showed that overexpression of PIMREG markedly enhanced the migration and invasion of glioma cells. Western blot analysis revealed that overexpression of PIMREG increased the expression of cyclin D1, cyclin E, Vimentin, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2, and MMP-9, but reduced the expression of E-cadherin. In addition, overexpression of PIMREG activated the β-catenin signaling pathway, as evidenced by the increased total and nuclear expression of β-catenin and the up-regulated expression of its downstream target c-myc. Furthermore, immunofluorescence staining further indicated the increased nuclear translocation of β-catenin in PIMREG-overexpressing cells. However, knockdown of PIMREG exerted opposite effects on glioma cells. Blockade of the β-catenin signaling by ICG-001 markedly impeded the promoting effects of PIMREG on glioma cell proliferation and invasion. In conclusion, PIMREG acts as a tumor promoter in glioma at least partly via activating the β-catenin signaling pathway. This study provides new insights into the molecular mechanism for glioma pathogenesis and treatment.