Proteomic Analysis of Human Endometrial Tissues Reveals the Roles of PI3K/AKT/mTOR Pathway and Tumor Angiogenesis Molecules in the Pathogenesis of Endometrial Cancer

Abstract

As one major gynecological malignancy, endometrial cancer (EC) has been widely studied recently. However, its pathogenesis is still unclear to date. In this study, we identified differentially expressed proteins between 30 endometrial cancer tissues and 30 matched normal controls using 2D LC-MS/MS quantitative proteomics. As a result, we identified 619 differentially expressed proteins among all 2521 proteins being quantified. Further analyses suggested that the changes of fat, amino acid metabolism, peroxisome, extracellular signal, cytoskeleton, and other signaling or metabolic pathways may be closely related to the development of this cancer. Particularly, the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway-related molecules including PI3K and mTOR, ERK (the molecule of the ERK pathway), SPP1, and ANGPT2 (angiogenesis-related molecules) are highly associated with the pathogenesis of EC, which were reconfirmed by western blot and immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis. In summary, our study revealed that the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway and tumor angiogenesis molecules contribute to the pathogenesis of endometrial cancer.