Pyrophosphatase overexpression is associated with cell migration, invasion, and poor prognosis in gastric cancer

Inorganic pyrophosphatase (PPase) catalyzes the hydrolysis of pyrophosphate to form orthophosphate. Pyrophosphate can substitute for ATP under certain circumstances. We previously conducted a proteomic analysis to investigate tumor-specific protein expression in gastric cancer, and PPase was identified as a potential gastric tumor-specific marker; it was therefore selected for further study. Clinicopathological analysis, using proteomic analysis and immunohistochemistry, was used to validate PPase as a prognostic marker in gastric cancers. Proteomic analysis showed that PPase was overexpressed in patients with lymph node (LN) metastases and high tumor node metastasis (TNM) stages (p < 0.05). Based on immunohistochemistry, patients whose tumors overexpressed PPase had higher T stages, LN metastasis, a higher TNM stage, a higher cancer recurrence rate, and shorter survival times than patients whose tumors exhibited PPase underexpression (p < 0.05). Gain-of-function and loss-of-function approaches were employed to examine the malignant phenotypes of PPase-overexpressing or PPase-depleted cells. A decrease in PPase expression caused a significant decrease in gastric cancer cell migration and invasion in vitro, whereas forced overexpression of PPase enhanced migration but not invasion. Our findings indicate that PPase is involved in gastric tumor progression and that PPase may be a useful marker for poor prognosis of human gastric cancers.