Single Investigation of the Role of APC2 in Colorectal Cancer

BackgroundAPC2 is as a homolog of adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) that has comparable functions in cancer, and is located on chromosome 19p13.3. It is an important signaling pathway protein in many cancers and diseases. For example, in ovarian cancer, APC2 serves as an important tumor suppressor through the induction of the WNT signaling pathway, inhibiting tumor invasion and growth. In colorectal cancer, APC2 was shown to be an important protein for inhibiting tumor invasion and metastasis. In the present study, APC2 was shown to be an important regulatory pathway protein that cooperates with microRNA bidirectional regulation to induce phenotypic changes in colorectal cancer.MethodsThrough measurements in colorectal cancer tissue samples (RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry), we found that the APC2 gene may play a role in the occurrence and development of colorectal cancer patients. We selected colorectal cancer cell lines as the research carrier of the APC2 gene. We changed the expression of APC2 gene in colorectal cancer cell lines by silencing the APC2 gene and up-regulating the APC2 gene, and then used cell cycle, MTT and western blot methods to measure its possible effects on colorectal cancer mechanisms.ResultWe found that the expression of APC2 in normal mucosal tissues in colorectal cancer tissues is was than that of matched colorectal cancer tissues, both at the protein and mRNA levels. We then tested colorectal cancer cell lines for gene silencing and up-regulation. We found that silencing the expression of the APC2 gene effectively advanced the cycle in colorectal cancer cells. In subsequent protein testing, we found that the proteins of the relevant cycle checkpoints changed accordingly. We found the opposite in cell lines after up-regulating the expression of the APC2 gene. By contrast, the SW480 cell line with k-ras mutation in the key pathway did not produce relevant changes by up-regulating the expression of the APC2 gene.ConclusionLow expression levels of the APC2 gene in colorectal cancer inhibit the progression of colorectal cancer cell lines through the RAS signaling pathway and hinders the occurrence and development of colorectal cancer.