Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 11 pp 14989—14998

Study on the expression profile and role of decorin in the progression of pancreatic cancer

Litao Zhang1, , Chao Liu2, , Huijie Gao2, , Caiju Zhou2, , Wei Qin2, , Jian Wang3, , Lingxin Meng4, , Huiyun Wang2, , Qiang Ren2, , Yuntao Zhang2, ,

  • 1 Department of Biological Science, Jining Medical University, Rizhao, Shandong, China
  • 2 Department of Pharmacy, Jining Medical University, Rizhao, Shandong, China
  • 3 Department of Pancreatic Oncology, Tianjin Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
  • 4 Department of Oncology, People's Hospital of Rizhao, Shandong, China

Received: October 28, 2020       Accepted: April 29, 2021       Published: May 21, 2021      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203060
How to Cite

Copyright: © 2021 Zhang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Desmoplasia in the extracellular matrix (ECM) is one of the hallmarks of pancreatic cancer (PC), a virtually incurable disease. Decorin, a classical small leucine-rich proteoglycan found in the ECM, was upregulated in PC tissue samples according to the data of TCGA. However, decorin plays a protective role in the ECM. So it is necessary to study the roles of decorin in the progression of PC. A significantly upregulated expression of decorin was observed in the PC tissue samples compared with the normal tissues. However, there was no considerable difference in the level of expression of decorin during different pathological stages, which was supported by the immunoblot analysis. Western blot showed a higher expression of decorin A in the para-carcinoma tissue than in the cancerous tissue but the expression of decorin B, C, and D was elevated in the cancerous tissue. The results of the MTT and scratch wound healing assays revealed an elevated proliferation ability and migration rate in decorin B-overexpressing cells but were inhibited in the decorin A-overexpressing cells. Overexpression of decorin A significantly elevated the expression of the apoptosis-related genes and Decorin B-overexpression elevated proliferation-related genes. All the results showed that decorin B played important roles in the promoting of PC.

Abbreviations

ANOVA: analysis of variance; BAX: BCL2 associated X; BCL2: B-cell lymphoma-2; CS: chondroitin sulfate; DS: dermatan sulfate; ECM: extracellular matrix; GEPIA: gene expression profiling interactive analysis; LRR: leucine-rich repeats; MAPK: mitogen associated protein kinase; PC: pancreatic cancer; PCNA: proliferating cell nuclear antigen; SLRPs: small leucine-rich proteoglycans.