Current studies have demonstrated that SLC38A1
proteins play a causal
role in
neoplastic cell transformation.The twofold aim of this study was to provide insight into whether a variance in the expression of SLC38A1 exists between
human colorectal cancer and healthy
human tissues and to determine how silencing or overexpressing the SLC38A1
gene could
affect the proliferation,viability and migration of
colorectal cancer cells.Immunohistochemical
staining was used to analyze the expression of SLC38A1 in
colorectal cancer tissues and adjacent normal
mucosa in 77
patients who underwent surgical resection.The expression of SLC38A1 in
colorectal cancer tissues and
cell lines was detected using RT-PCR and
Western blotting.Two
colorectal cancer cell lines SW480 and HCT116 were used to examine whether silencing SLC38A1 with
siRNA and overexpressing SLC38A1 with
shRNA could
affect cell viability and migration.As a result,the SLC38A1
protein was very low or undetectable in the normal
colon mucosa.In contrast,strong
staining of SLC38A1
protein was found in the
cytoplasm in 79.2%
colorectal cancer samples.More pronounced SLC38A1 expression in
colorectal cancer tissues was significantly associated with
tumor node
metastasis (TNM) stage.Inhibition of SLC38A1 reduced tumour
growth and suppressed proliferation and migration of SW480
cells.In contrast,overexpression of SLC38A1 had the opposite effects on
HCT116 cells.S LC38A1 is overexpressed in
colorectal cancer,which suggests that it is associated with tumour progression.These results encourage the exploration of SLC38A1 as a target for intervention in
colorectal cancer.