Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 1, 2026
Patient-derived Heterogeneous Xenograft Model of Pancreatic Cancer Using Zebrafish Larvae as Hosts for Comparative Drug Assessment
Published on: April 30, 2019
Clusterin confers gemcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer
Qingfeng Chen1, Zhengkun Wang, Kejun Zhang
1Affiliated Hospital of Medical College, QingDao University, RP China.
Objective:
To measure clusterin expression in pancreatic cancer tissues and cell lines and to evaluate whether clusterin confers resistance to gmcitabine in pancreatic cancer cells.
Methods:
Immunohistochemistry for clusterin was performed on 50 primary pancreatic cancer tissues and 25 matched backgrounds, and clusterin expression in 5 pancreatic cancer cell lines was quantified by Western blot and PT-PCR. The correlation between clusterin expression level and gmcitabine IC50 in pancreatic cancer cell lines was evaluated. The effect of an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) against clusterin (ASO-CLU) [corrected] on gmcitabine resistance was evaluated by MTT assays. Xenograft model was used to demonstrate tumor growth.
Results:
Pancreatic cancer tissues expressed significantly higher levels of clusterin than did normal pancreatic tissues (P < 0.01). Clusterin expression levels were correlated with gmcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer cell lines, and ASO-CLU [corrected] significantly decreased BxPc-3 cells resistance to gmcitabine (P < 0.01). In vivo systemic administration of AS clusterin and gmcitabine significantly decreased the s.c. BxPC-3 tumor volume compared with mismatch control ODN plus gmcitabine.
Conclusion:
Our finding that clusterin expression was significantly higher in pancreatic cancer than in normal pancreatic tissues suggests that clusterin may confer gmcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer cells.
