Melphalan modulates the expression of E7-specific biomarkers in E7-Tg mice

Abstract

HPV oncoproteins are selectively retained and expressed in HPV infected carcinoma cells. The E7 oncoprotein interacts with the tumour suppressor Rb, and leads to the progression of oncogenesis. In a previous study, E7 biomarkers were identified in E7 Tg mice. In this study, in order to investigate whether a genotoxic carcinogen would modulate carcinogenesis in the E7-Tg mice, an anticancer drug, melphalan, was intraperitoneally injected into E7-Tg mice for eight weeks at two-day intervals and then genes and proteins were analysed using Omics approaches and RT-qPCR. RT-qPCR was performed to confirm whether E7 biomarkers would be modulated by melphalan treatment in E7-Tg mice, revealing that up-regulated E7 markers such as cyclin B1, CD166, and actin α1 were down-regulated, whereas expression of down-regulated E7 markers such as vimentin was restored by melphalan treatment. These results suggest that melphalan inhibits carcinogenesis via modulating E7-specific genes and proteins expressed in the lung tissues of E7 Tg mice.