Mechanism of periplakin on ovarian cancer cell phenotype and its influence on prognosis

BACKGROUND: The aim of this paper was to investigate the clinical significance of periplakin (PPL) expression in ovarian cancer (OV) tissues and to explore the influence and possible mechanism of PPL on OV apoptosis. METHODS: PPL expression in OV tissues was detected by western blotting, and its correlation with the clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of OV patients was analyzed. The influence of PPL expression on the growth of OV cell lines was analyzed using the DepMap database. The biological function of PPL and related genes in tumors was studied using Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. PPL expression in OV cell lines was detected by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). The expression of apoptosis-related proteins in each group after PPL knockdown was detected by western blotting. RESULTS: PPL expression in OV tissues was higher than that in normal ovarian tissues (P<0.05). PPL messenger RNA (mRNA) expression was highest in the OV cell line CAOV-4 and lowest in the OV cell line CoC1. PPL expression was decreased in the si-PPL-1, si-PPL-2, and si-PPL-3 groups, with significant inhibition in the si-PPL-1 and si-PPL-3 groups. Compared to that in the si-NC group, the cell proliferation rate in the si-PPL-1 and si-PPL-3 groups was decreased, and the apoptosis rate was increased. The expression of active caspase 3 and BCL-2-associated X (BAX) was increased, while that of B-cell lymphoma 2 (BCL-2) was decreased. CONCLUSIONS: PPL was highly expressed in OV tissues and cell lines, and this was related to the prognosis of OV patients. PPL might promote cancers by inhibiting OV apoptosis and could be a potential target of therapy for OV.