Loss of glutathione peroxidase 3 expression is correlated with epigenetic mechanisms in endometrial adenocarcinoma

Glutathione peroxidase 3 (GPX3) is one of the key enzymes in the cellular defense against oxidative stress and the hepatocyte growth factor receptor, (MET) has been suggested to be influenced by the GPX3 gene expression. In a previous microarray study performed by our group, Gpx3 was identified as a potential biomarker for rat endometrial adenocarcinoma (EAC), since the expression was highly downregulated in rat EAC tumors. Herein, we have investigated the mRNA expression and Gpx3 and Met in rat EAC by real time quantitative PCR (qPCR), and the methylation status of Gpx3. In addition we have examined the expression of GPX3 and MET in 30 human EACs of different FIGO grades and 20 benign endometrial tissues. We found that the expression of GPX3 was uniformly down regulated in both rat and human EAC, regardless of tumor grade or histopathological subtype, implying that the down-regulation is an early event in EAC. The rate of Gpx3 promoter methylation reaches 91%, where biallelic methylation was present in 90% of the methylated tumors. The expression of the Met oncogene was slightly upregulated in EACs that showed loss of expression of Gpx3, but no tumor suppressor activity of Gpx3/GPX3 was detected. Preliminary results also suggest that the production of H₂O₂ is higher in rat endometrial tumors with down-regulated Gpx3 expression. A likely consequence of loss of GPX3 protein function would be a higher amount of ROS in the cancer cell environment. Thus, the results suggest important clinical implications of the GPX3 expression in EAC, both as a molecular biomarker for EAC and as a potential target for therapeutic interventions.