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Updated: Jan 8, 2026

Assessment of Mitochondrial Health in Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts Isolated from 3D Multicellular Lung Tumor Spheroids
Published on: October 21, 2022
Autocrine motility factor-receptor gene expression in lung cancer
1Department of Surgery, Teikyo University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
Objective:
Autocrine motility factor (AMF) stimulates cell motility via binding its receptor (AMF-R) and AMF-R is engaged in tumor cell motility and the AMF-R gene expression level may define a more aggressive phenotype. In this study, we investigated the expression of AMF-R in lung cancer cells and revealed its roles in the cell motility of a tumor. We detected AMF-R expression in tissue specimens from patients with non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) and assessed their clinical characteristics.
Methods:
Using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analyses and phagokinetic assay, we studied the correlation between the level of AMF-R gene expression and cell motility. We quantified the expression of AMF-R in 51 patients with NSCLCs to investigate the relationship between AMF-R expression and clinicopathologic factors and prognosis.
Results:
We found that lung cancer cell lines with higher AMF-R gene expression tended to have larger cell motility than those with lower AMF-R gene expression. The AMF-R gene expression was significantly associated with lymph node metastasis, and stage. The overall survival rate for patients with a high level of AMF-R gene expression with tumors was significantly worse than for those individuals whose tumors had low AMF-R expression. Furthermore, AMF-R expression was significantly related to survival by multivariate analysis.
Conclusion:
These data indicate that AMF-R may contribute to tumor progression and AMF-R gene expression can serve as a useful prognostic marker in NSCLCs.

