Problem: To get a comprehensive picture of cytokine expression in health and disease is difficult, cytokines are transiently and locally expressed, and protein analyses are burdened by biological modifications, technical issues, and sensitivity to handling of samples. Thus, alternative methods, based on molecular techniques for cytokine mRNA analyses, are often used. We compared cytokine mRNA and protein expression to evaluate whether cytokine mRNA profiles can be used instead of protein analyses.
Method of study: In kinetic experiments, cytokine mRNA and protein expression of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, and TNF-β/LTA were studied using real-time RT-qPCR and Luminex® microarrays in the ovarian cancer cell lines OVCAR-3, SKOV-3 and the T-cell line Jurkat, after activation of transcription by thermal stress. In addition, we analyzed IL-6 and IL-8 mRNA and protein in a small number of ovarian cancer patients.
Results: Ovarian cancer cells can express cytokines on both mRNA and protein level, with 1-4 hours' time delay between the mRNA and protein peak and a negative Spearman correlation. The mRNA and protein expression in patient samples was poorly correlated, reflecting previous studies.
Conclusion: Cytokine mRNA and protein expression levels show diverging results, depending on the material analyzed and the method used. Considering the high sensitivity and reproducibility of real-time RT-qPCR, we suggest that cytokine mRNA profiles could be used as a proxy for protein expression for some specific purposes, such as comparisons between different patient groups, and in defining mechanistic pathways involved in the pathogenesis of cancer and other pathological conditions.
Keywords: cytokine; mRNA; ovarian cancer; protein; protein microarray; real-time polymerase chain reaction.
© 2020 The Authors. American Journal of Reproductive Immunology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.