[Expression of desmoglein 3 in nasopharyngeal carcinoma: research of 22 cases].

Objective: To investigate the expression of desmoglein 3 (DSG3), a candidate target gene in the antisense RNA (aRNA) from the purified nasopharyngeal tissues in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).
Methods: Specimens of nasopharyngeal tissues were harvested from 22 NPC patients, aged 44 +/- 11 (NPC group), and 12 normal persons or patients with nasopharyngeal infectious diseases, aged 46 +/- 14. Microdissection technique was used to get homogenous tissue cells from which total RNA was isolated (control group). aRNA was amplified from the total RNA by "in vitro transcription" (IVT). The expression of DSG3 gene was identified using these aRNA by semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (sqRT-PCR).
Results: The average expression level of DSG3 in the NPC group was 3.536 +/- 2.689, significantly higher than that of the control group (0.95 +/- 0.23, df = 32, t = 3.307, P = 0.002). The expression level of DSG3 in the whole expression profiling of the NPC group was 1.06 +/- 1.60, significantly higher than that of the control group (0.48 +/- 0.23, df = 16, t = 2.145, P = 0.048).
Conclusion: The whole genome expression profiling detected by sqRT-PCR can be used to shift the marker genes from biopsy tissue samples. DSG3 may be a tumor candidate gene in NPC.