Influence Of Heat Shock Protein Gp96 On The Malignant Behavior Of Cancer And Its Function In Tumor Immunity

Heat shock protein (HSP) gp96 is a highly conserved and monomorphic molecule, and is an abundant endoplasmic reticulum resident glycoprotein. Human and murine gp96 show 96% homology at the amino acid level. Gp96 functions as molecular chaperone. A diverse array of cellular peptides have been found to be associated with gp96 molecules uncovalently. Gp96 is an important protein in antigen presentation. Recent studies have indicated that gp96 molecules participate in antigen presentation pathway of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecule. Animal experiments also confirm that immunization of mice with gp96 preparations isolated from cancer cells can elicit cancer-specific protective cell immune response.Cancer is a fatal disease to human health. A series of studies have demonstrated that the relationship between HSPs and cancer is of considerable interest. Normally gp96 is expressed constitutively in cells, but the expression of gp96 molecule is upregulated in cancer cells. It can also be upregulated by many stress conditions such as heat shock, heavy mental, glucose deprivation, virus infection. But up to now, there are no reports of the influences of the expression level of gp96 on the malignant behavior of cancer cells and its immunogenicity. In this study, the expression level of gp96 in cancer cells was enhanced or inhibited specifically by gene recombination and anti-sense RNA techniques, and the influences of the alteration of gp96 expression level on the biological behavior of cancer cells such as cell growth rate and colony-forming ability were studied,...