Background & objective: It was reported that a locus of high frequency loss of heterozygosity was found at 3p14-25 of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) cells. This study was designed to identify the expressed sequence tags (ESTs) associated with NPC at chromosome 3p21 in order to clone new candidate NPC-associated genes at the locus.
Methods: The expression of relative ESTs at 3p21 was determined in nasopharyngeal carcinoma tissues and normal nasopharyngeal epithelia using ESTs homology analysis with bioinformatics in computer network combined with reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The expression of EST was detected in other normal tissues and tumor cell lines using Northern blot analysis.
Results: Comparing with expression of normal nasopharyngeal epithelia, EST (N31985) was down-regulated in 60.00% (3/5) nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell lines and 47.06% (16/34) nasopharyngeal carcinoma tissues (P < 0.05).
Conclusion: N31985 is down-regulated in NPC, suggesting it may play a role in NPC carcinogenesis.