Objectives: Previous studies demonstrate that changes in pre-mRNA splicing play a significant role in human disease development. Furthermore, many cancer-associated genes are regulated by alternative splicing. There are mounting evidences that splice variants which express predominantly in tumors, have clear diagnostic value and may provide potential drug targets. Located on the X chromosome, ZFX gene functions as a transcription regulator for self-renewal of stem cells. This gene has 5 splice variants that encode 3 isoforms. In the present study, we evaluated the clinicopathological relevance of the expression of ZFX isoform 3/variant 5 gene in gastric carcinoma.
Materials and methods: A total of 60 tumoral and non-tumoral gastric specimens were evaluated for ZFX isoform 3/variant 5 gene expression using quantitative real-time PCR.
Results: Our results showed that the expression of ZFX isoform 3/variant 5 transcript was heterogeneous in gastric specimens. We further showed that there was a positive correlation between the variant expression and tumor size, but not with other clinicopathological features of gastric tumors.
Conclusion: This report shows that the expression of ZFX isoform 3/variant 5 transcript was heterogeneous in gastric specimens. Furthermore, there was no significant association between ZFX isoform 3/variant 5 expression and most of clinicopathological features of gastric tumors except for a positive correlation with tumor size. The elucidation of the precise molecular mechanisms governed by the ZFX isoforms/variants needs further investigation.
Keywords: Alternative Splicing; Gastric cancer; Gene Expression; Self-renewal; ZFX.