Lei Yang¹, Jia Zhu², Hua Huang³, Qichang Yang⁴, Jing Cai¹, Qiuhong Wang⁴, Junyang Zhu², Mengting Shao², Jinzhang Xiao¹, Jie Cao⁴, Xiaodan Gu², Shusen Zhang¹, Yingying Wang²

¹Department of Oncology, Nantong Tumor Hospital, ²Department of Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory for Inflammation and Molecular Drug Target, Medical College of Nantong University, ³Department of Pathology, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, ⁴Nantong First People's Hospital

Objective:PFTK1, also known as PFTAIRE1, CDK14, is a novel member of Cdc2-related serine/threonine protein kinases. Recent studies show that PFTK1 is highly expressed in several malignant tumors such as hepatocellular carcinoma, esophageal cancer, breast cancer, and involved in regulation of cell cycle, tumors proliferation, migration, invasion that further influence the prognosis of tumors. However, the expression and physiological significance of PFTK1 in gastric cancer remain unclear. Method: In this study, we analyzed the expression and clinical significance of PFTK1 by Western blot in 8 paired fresh gastric cancer tissues and immunohistochemistry on 161 paraffin embedded slices. Result: High PFTK1 expression was correlated with the tumor grade, lymph node invasion as well as Ki-67. Through CCK8 assay, flow cytometry, colony formation, wound healing and trans well assays, the vitro studies demonstrated that PFTK1 overexpression promoted proliferation, migration and invasion of gastric cancer cells, while PFTK1 knockdown led to the opposite results. Conclusion: Our findings for the first time supported that PFTK1 might play an important role in the regulation of gastric cancer proliferation, migration and would provide a novel promising therapeutic strategy against human gastric cancer.

Key Words: gastric cancer  PFTK1  proliferation