Expression Of Aquaporins In Epithelia Ovarian Carcinoma And Its Role On Cell Sensitivity To Cisplatin

Aquaporins(AQPs) are specialized channels to quickly transport water across cell plasma membranes, which are distributed in mammal tissue extensively. AQPs is essential for cell to maintain water balance. Studies have shown that AQPs are strongly expressed in neoplasm of different origins, and they may play important roles in cell proliferation and migration of agressisve tumor. The present study aims at investigating the role of aquaporins in the epithelia ovarian carcinoma. The study was divided into two parts:1. expression of AQPs in epithelia ovarian tumor; 2. effect of AQPs on chemosensitivity to cisplatin in ovarian cancer.Part one Expression of aquaporins in epithelia ovarian tumorPrevious study showed that some AQPs became upgrated in ovarian carcinoma, including AQP1, AQP3 and AQP5. To discovery the other subtype of aquaporin in epithelia ovarian tumor, immunohistochemical technique and western botting were used to detect the protein expression of AQP2, AQP4, AQP6, AQP7, AQP8 and AQP9. Immunohistochemical study show AQP6, AQP8 and AQP9 were expressed in ovarian tumor, but AQP2, AQP4 and AQP7 were not. The protein expression of AQP6 in serous ovarian cancer significantly decreased than that of benign tumor and normal tissue, and AQP9 expression significantly increased in mucinous tumors. There were no difference of AQP8 expression between malignant and benign tumors. These data indicated that there are different distribution and function of aquaporins in ovarian tumor.Part two Effects of aquaporins on chemosensitivity to cisplatin in ovarian cancer cellsAs a water transporter, aquaporins are closely related to other membrane transporters, and water permeability metabolism in cell may contribute to chemosensitivity of tumor. In this study, effects of cisplatin on aquaporins mRNA expression ovarian cancer cell SKOV3 were measured by RT-PCR. To understand the role of aquaporins on cell proliferation of SKOV3, chemosensitivity to cisplatin was observed in hypertoncity and aquaporin inhibition. MTT analyses showed that aquqporin blocker and hypertonicity increased the sensitivity of SKOV3 to cisplatin. The effects of cisplatin on SKOV3 are different between different subtype of aquaporin, following incubation time increasing, the expression of AQP1 mRNA decreased significantly, but expression of AQP3 and AQP8 increased. This results show that aquaporins may play an important role in chemosensivity of ovarian cancer.In conclusion, our studies have shown that different subtypes of aquaporins may play different roles in ovarian tumors, and aquaporins are associated with chemotherapy sensitivity of ovarian cancer. The research of aquaporins in ovarian cancer will provide a new direction for the pathogenesis of ovarian cancer and drug sensitivity studies for chemotherapy.