Knockdown of LMTK3 in the Endometrioid Adenocarcinoma Cell Line Ishikawa: Inhibition of Growth and Estrogen Receptor α

Guiyang Cai; Wei Sun; Fangfang Bi; Dandan Wang; Qing Yang

doi:10.3389/fonc.2021.692282

Knockdown of LMTK3 in the Endometrioid Adenocarcinoma Cell Line Ishikawa: Inhibition of Growth and Estrogen Receptor α

Front Oncol. 2021 Oct 20:11:692282. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2021.692282. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Guiyang Cai¹, Wei Sun², Fangfang Bi¹, Dandan Wang¹, Qing Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China.
² Department of Key Laboratory of Cell Biology, Ministry of Public Health and Key Laboratory of Medical Cell Biology, China Medical University, Shenyang, China.

Abstract

Objective: The curative effect of high-efficiency progesterone and other therapeutic drugs for endometrioid adenocarcinoma patients with preservation of reproductive capacity has not been satisfactory so far. Novel therapeutic drugs need to be explored.

Methods: We investigated the cytoplastic and nuclear expression levels of LMTK3 between endometrioid adenocarcinoma tissues and adjacent endometrial tissues by immunohistochemistry. We detected the effects of LMTK3 on cell viability of Ishikawa cells by CCK-8. We detected the effects of LMTK3 on cell cycle and apoptosis of Ishikawa cells by flow cytometry. We also detected the effects of LMTK3 knockdown on mRNA and protein levels of ERα by qRT-PCR and western blotting, respectively. We also used the cBioPortal online database to analyze the coexpression of LMTK3 and ESR1 in 1647 UCEC samples.

Results: We used TMAs to identify that LMTK3 was mainly detected in the cytoplasm of endometrioid tissues, and cytoplasmic LMTK3 expression in endometrioid tissues was higher than that in adjacent endometrial tissues (P < 0.05). LMTK3 knockdown decreased the proliferation of Ishikawa cells through decreasing cell viability (P < 0.01), increasing G1 (P < 0.001) arrest, and promoting apoptosis (P < 0.01). There was a positive correlation between the mRNA expression levels of LMTK3 and ESR1 (Spearman: P=2.011e-5, R=0.13; Pearson: P=7.18e-8, R=0.17). Knockdown of LMTK3 also reduced the mRNA (P < 0.001) and protein (P < 0.001) levels of ERα.

Conclusions: Inhibitors of LMTK3 may be a possible future treatment for ERα and LMTK3 highly expressed endometrioid adenocarcinoma following appropriate studies.

Keywords: ERα; LMTK3; apoptosis; cell cycle; endometrioid adenocarcinoma; proliferation.