Melphalan Modulates the Expression of E7-Specific Biomarkers in E7-Tg Mice

HPV oncoproteins are selectively retained and expressed in HPV infected carcinoma cells. The E7 oncoprotein interacts with the tumour suppressor Rb, and leads to the progression of oncogenesis. In a previous study, E7 biomarkers were identified in E7 Tg mice. In this study, in order to investigate whether a genotoxic carcinogen would modulate carcinogenesis in the E7-Tg mice, an anticancer drug, melphalan, was intraperitoneally injected into E7-Tg mice for eight weeks at two-day intervals and then genes and proteins were analysed using Omics approaches and RT-qPCR. RT-qPCR was performed to confirm whether E7 biomarkers would be modulated by melphalan treatment in E7-Tg mice, revealing that up-regulated E7 markers such as cyclin B1, CD166, and actin alpha1 were down-regulated, whereas expression of down-regulated E7 markers such as vimentin was restored by melphalan treatment. These results suggest that melphalan inhibits carcinogenesis via modulating E7-specific genes and proteins expressed in the lung tissues of E7 Tg mice.