Analysis of gene and protein expression of opticin in human cancer cell lines

Opticin, as a member of small leucine rich proteoglycans (SLRPs), mainly expressed in human eyes. It is also expressed in human brain, ligament, liver and skin, but at lower levels than the eyes. In the present study, expression of opticin was studied in a variety of human cancer cell lines. In this basic study, human cancer cell lines including, A-172 (brain cancer), T47D (mammary gland carcinoma), Paca-2 (pancreas carcinoma), Ej-138 (bladder carcinoma), Calu6 (lung carcinoma), ACHN (kidney cancer), SKOV3 (ovarian cancer), LS-180 (colon carcinoma), A-375 (skin cancer), PC3 (prostate adenocarcinoma), CLL-CII (chronic lymphocytic leukemia) were cultured under standard conditions. Opticin expression in the cell lines was detected by RT-PCR and Western blot. All cancer cell lines, except A-172, expressed opticin at both mRNA and protein levels. In the current study, human cancer cell lines were shown to express opticin whereas previous studies did not detect opticin in normal tissues. This finding may represent opticin as a novel tumor marker in a wide variety of cancers and future studies can be performed to evaluate function of this protein in carcinogenesis.