Lentivirus-mediated shRNA interference of clusterin blocks proliferation, motility, invasion and cell cycle in the ovarian cancer cells

BACKGROUND: In a previous analysis on the patients with ovarian cancers, we have found that clusterin is a biomarker associated with ovarian cancer in vivo and may be a prognostic factor associated with adverse outcome. Here, we explored the effect of lentivirus-mediated shRNA interference of clusterin, investigated whether clusterin was associated with adverse outcome of ovarian cancer cells in vitro. METHODS: OVCAR-3 and TOV-21G cell lines were infected with the lentivirus for delivering clusterin shRNA, and the stably transfected cells were selected. The effect of clusterin silencing was detected by western blotting assay. The proliferation, clonability, migration, invasion and cell cycle of two cell lines were detected separately by MTT assay, clone formation assay, scratch assay, transwell assay and fluorescence-activated cell sorting. RESULTS: Following clusterin silencing with shRNA, the expression of clusterin in two cell lines were decreased. And the proliferation, clonability, migration, invasion of these two cell lines were down-regulated apparently. The cell cycle of two cell lines was disturbed, cells in G1 phase was increased, but cells in G2 and S phase was decreased. CONCLUSIONS: The expression of clusterin is significantly correlated with the biological characteristics of ovarian cancer cells, it may be a potential molecular for ovarian cancer treatment.