| Lung cancer has been the most common cancer and the most common cause of cancer death in the world. It damages people's health severely. APRIL (A proliferation-inducing ligand), also known as TALL-2 and TNFSF13, has pleiotropic biological functions, including stimulating tumor cell growth , modulating tumor cell apoptosis, and activating nuclear factor-kappa. It plays a key role in some solid tumors and immunity diseases. APRIL is involved in the formation and maintenance of some tumors. To identify APRIL expression profile in tumor tissue and sputum of lung cancer, and evaluate the possibility of an assistant diagnosis of lung cancer by real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) in sputum as well, we analyzed the expression of APRIL mRNA in 72 tissue samples and 68 corresponding sputum samples of lung cancer by RT-qPCR and analyzed their correlation. APRIL protein expression was also observed in tumor tissues by Western blotting and immunohistochemistry. Our expression analysis revealed APRIL expression was elevated in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and the expression of APRIL protein was located in the membrane and cytoplasm of tumor cells by immunohistochemiscal staining. Compared to benign pulmonary disease and healthy volunteers, the expression of APRIL mRNA in sputum of lung cancer were elevated (both P<0.001). When cut-off values for positivity were set at the mean+2S.D. of mRNA expression in healthy volunteers, the positive rate for APRIL mRNA expression was 85.3% in sputum samples of lung cancer, 3.2% in benign pulmonary disease. The correlation was evident between the expression level of APRIL mRNA of tissue samples and that of sputum samples (P<0.001, r=0.702). These results support the possibility that the APRIL gene may play a key role in lung cancer, especially in NSCLC. The elevated expression level of APRIL mRNA in sputum of NSCLC suggested that APRIL mRNA may serve as an effective and convenient diagnostic biomarker for NSCLC. |
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