PAICS, a De Novo Purine Biosynthetic Enzyme, Is Overexpressed in Pancreatic Cancer and Is Involved in Its Progression.

PAICS, a De Novo Purine Biosynthetic Enzyme, Is Overexpressed in Pancreatic Cancer and Is Involved in Its Progression. Transl Oncol. 2020 May 14;13(7):100776 Authors: Agarwal S, Chakravarthi BVSK, Kim HG, Gupta N, Hale K, Balasubramanya SAH, Oliver PG, Thomas DG, Eltoum IA, Buchsbaum DJ, Manne U, Varambally S Abstract Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive cancer with an extremely poor prognosis. There is an urgent need to identify new therapeutic targets and also understand the mechanism of PDAC progression that leads to aggressiveness of the disease. To find therapeutic targets, we analyzed data related to PDAC transcriptome sequencing and found overexpression of the de novo purine metabolic enzyme phosphoribosylaminoimidazole succinocarboxamide synthetase (PAICS). Immunohistochemical analysis of PDAC tissues showed high expression of the PAICS protein. To assess the biological roles of PAICS, we used RNA interference and knock down of its expression in PDAC cell lines that caused a reduction in PDAC cell proliferation and invasion. Furthermore, results of chorioallantoic membrane assays and pancreatic cancer xenografts demonstrated that PAICS regulated pancreatic tumor growth. Our data also showed that, in PDAC cells, microRNA-128 regulates and targets PAICS. PAICS depletion in PDAC cells caused upregulation in E-cadherin, a marker of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition. In PDAC cells, a BET inhibitor, JQ1, red...
Source: Translational Oncology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Transl Oncol Source Type: research