The expression pattern of APC2 and APC7 in various cancer cell lines and AML patients

Anaphase promoting complex (APC/C) is an E3 ligase enzyme, which ubiquinates various proteins involved in the cell cycle. This protein complex may have a pivotal role in the cell cycle control affecting pathological conditions such as cancer. APC7 and APC2 subunits of the APC/C complex are involved in the substrate recognition and the catalytic reaction, respectively.

In this study, quantitative Real-time PCR was used to analyse APC2 and APC7 expression in different cancer cell lines as well as AML patient's blood cells.

The results showed that APC2 and APC7 subunits were both over expressed in cancer cell lines (p=0.008). The mean expression ratio of APC2 and APC7 in different cancer cells were 2.60±0.22 and 4.83±0.11, respectively. An increase in expression of APC2 and APC7 was seen among 12 out of 14 AML patients (85%). There was a significant positive correlation between APC2 upregulation and the detection of splenomegaly in the patients (r=0.808, p=0.001).

This was the first study suggesting that APC/C upregulation may contribute to the pathogenesis of cancer and can be used as a molecular biomarker to predict the progression and the prognosis of AML.