OBJECTIVE Extravillous trophoblast (EVT) cells invade the endometrium and the maternal spiral arterioles during the first trimester. Mammary Serine Protease Inhibitor (Maspin, SERPINB5) plays a putative role in regulating the invasive activity of cytotrophoblasts. The maspin gene is silenced in various cancers by an epigenetic mechanism that involves aberrant cytosine methylation. We investigat...

BACKGROUND Quantification of cell-free fetal DNA by methylation-based DNA discrimination has been used in non-invasive prenatal testing of fetal chromosomal aneuploidy. The maspin (Serpin peptidase inhibitor, clade B (ovalbumin), member 5; SERPINB5) gene, located on chromosome 18q21.33, is hypomethylated in the placenta and completely methylated in maternal blood cells. The objective of this st...

The maspin gene is not expressed in normal human pancreas, but its expression is acquired during human pancreatic carcinogenesis. In other normal human cells and their malignant counterparts, maspin expression is controlled through the epigenetic state of its promoter. In studies presented herein, we used bisulfite genomic sequencing and chromatin immunoprecipitation studies to show that maspin...

Altered degradation and deposition of extracellular matrix are hallmarks of tumor progression and response to therapy. From a microarray supervised analysis on a dataset of chemotherapy-treated breast carcinoma patients, maspin, a member of the serpin protease inhibitor family, has been the foremost variable identified in non-responsive versus responsive tumors. Accordingly, in a series of 52 h...

PURPOSE Maspin, a tumor-suppressor protein that regulates cell migration, invasion, and adhesion, is synthesized by many normal epithelial cells, but downregulated in invasive epithelial tumor cells. The purpose of this study was to determine whether cells in the normal human cornea express maspin and whether maspin affects corneal stromal cell adhesion to extracellular matrix molecules. METH...

Maspin is a novel serine protease inhibitor with tumor suppressive activity, inhibiting tumor invasion and metastasis. To date, the underlying molecular mechanism of maspin remains elusive. Recombinant maspin has been shown to specifically inhibit cell surface-associated urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and fibrinogen-bound tissue-type plasminogen activator. However, the role of endog...

A TUMOR-SUPPRESSIVE ROLE OF MASPIN SECRETED VIA THE EXOSOMESbyIVORY DEANDecember 2014Advisor: Shijie Sheng, Ph.D. Major: Cancer BiologyDegree: Doctor of PhilosophyThis dissertation highlights several novel findings. Maspin has been consistentlydetected in the conditioned media of maspin-expressing cells of normal and tumorbreast, prostate and lung origin. Fur...

BACKGROUND To investigate the role of maspin expression in the progression of gastrointestinal stromal tumors, and its value as a prognostic indicator. METHODS In the study 54 patients with GIST diagnosis were included in Uludag University of Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pathology between 1997-2007. The expression of maspin in 54 cases of gastrointestinal stromal tumor was detected by i...

Both maspin and glutathione S-transferase pi (GSTp) are implicated as tumor suppressors and downregulated in human prostate cancer. It is well established that GSTp downregulation is through DNA methylation-based silencing. We report here that maspin expression in prostate cancer cell line DU145 reversed GSTp DNA methylation, as measured by methylation- specific PCR, MethyLight assay, and bisul...

BACKGROUD Widespread endothelial injury contributes to the occurrence of preeclampsia. Maspin, first identified as a tumor suppressor, plays a critical role in cell invasion and angiogenesis. Our previous studies found that the expression of maspin was increased in preeclampsic placenta. In this research, we studied the function of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) to explore the ...