Transcriptome signatures in Helicobacter pylori-infected mucosa identifies acidic mammalian chitinase loss as a corpus atrophy marker
Journal article, 2013

The majority of gastric cancer cases are believed to be caused by chronic infection with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, and atrophic corpus gastritis is a predisposing condition to gastric cancer development. We aimed to increase understanding of the molecular details of atrophy by performing a global transcriptome analysis of stomach tissue. Biopsies from patients with different stages of H. pylori infection were taken from both the antrum and corpus mucosa and analyzed on microarrays. The stages included patients without current H. pylori infection, H. pylori-infected without corpus atrophy and patients with current or past H. pylori-infection with corpus-predominant atrophic gastritis. Using clustering and integrated analysis, we found firm evidence for antralization of the corpus mucosa of atrophy patients. This antralization harbored gain of gastrin expression, as well as loss of expression of corpus-related genes, such as genes associated with acid production, energy metabolism and blood clotting. The analyses provided detailed molecular evidence for simultaneous intestinal metaplasia (IM) and spasmolytic polypeptide expressing metaplasia (SPEM) in atrophic corpus tissue. Finally, acidic mammalian chitinase, a chitin-degrading enzyme produced by chief cells, was shown to be strongly down-regulated in corpus atrophy. Transcriptome analysis revealed several gene groups which are related to development of corpus atrophy, some of which were increased also in H. pylori-infected non-atrophic patients. Furthermore, loss of acidic chitinase expression is a promising marker for corpus atrophy.

Integrated analysis

Acidic mammalian chitinase

Gastric cancer

Corpus gastritis

Author

Intawat Nookaew

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Life Sciences

Kaisa Thorell

University of Gothenburg

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Life Sciences

Kuntal Worah

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering

University of Gothenburg

Shugui Wang

Karolinska University Hospital

National Cancer Centre, Singapore

Martin Lloyd Hibberd

Genome Institute of Singapore

Henrik Sjövall

University of Gothenburg

Sven Pettersson

National Cancer Centre, Singapore

Karolinska University Hospital

Jens B Nielsen

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Life Sciences

Samuel B Lundin

University of Gothenburg

BMC Medical Genomics

1755-8794 (ISSN)

Vol. 6 41 41

Subject Categories

Clinical Medicine

Infrastructure

C3SE (Chalmers Centre for Computational Science and Engineering)

DOI

10.1186/1755-8794-6-41

More information

Created

10/7/2017