Investigating the mRNA expression levels of Hippo pathway in adenoma polyps

Background Neoplastic adenomatous polyps generating from the epithelial cells are considered benign tumors. Adenomatous polyps are common in western countries and it can take seven to 10 or more years for an adenoma to evolve into cancer.  The Hippo signaling pathway, also known as the Salvador-Warts-Hippo (SWH) pathway, is a signaling pathway that controls organ size in animals through the regulation of cell proliferation and apoptosis, although, Hippo pathway genes have been investigated in multiple types of cancer, the role of this pathway and the manifestation of adenoma polyps are not still fully discovered. Although the molecular events occurring during the CRC development have been widely studied, the molecular events among different types of intestinal polyps remain unclear. Our study aims to evaluate the mRNA expression of three Hippo pathway components including YAP, TAZ, and TEAD1 in the progression of adenoma polyps. Methods Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to examine the mRNA expression levels of, YAP, TAZ, TEAD1in 30 pairs of human adenomas polyps’ tissues, and adjacent nontumorous tissues from CRC patients. Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) was used as the housekeeping gene in qRT-PCR, in addition, we investigated the correlation between clinicopathologic features and the candidate genes expression in patients with adenoma polyps. Results: The mRNA expression levels of YAP and TAZ, TEAD was found to be overexpressed from adenoma polyps’ tissues to adjacent nontumorous tissues (P < 0.001). Furthermore, statistical analysis showed that the expression levels of Hippo signal pathway selected components were associated with lymph node metastasis and only TAZ was associated with TNM stage (I-II) among other genes. Conclusion: Upregulation of three candidate genes within the Hippo pathway was observed, this upregulation can affect the progression of adenomas to colorectal cancer (CRC). In short, the Hippo pathway can be a crucial target for further investigation for patients with adenoma polyps.