[Expression and clinical significance of SHP2 in the tumor tissues of smokers with lung cancer]

SHP2 phosphatase as a novel therapeutic target for melanoma treatment

Melanoma ranks among the most aggressive and deadly human cancers. Although a number of targeted therapies are available, they are effective only in a subset of patients and the emergence of drug resistance often reduces durable responses. Thus there is an urgent need to identify new therapeutic targets and develop more potent pharmacological agents for melanoma treatment. Herein we report that SHP2 levels are frequently elevated in melanoma, and high SHP2 expression is significantly associated with more metastatic phenotype and poorer prognosis. We show that SHP2 promotes melanoma cell viability, motility, and anchorage-independent growth, through activation of both ERK1/2 and AKT signaling pathways. We demonstrate that SHP2 inhibitor 11a-1 effectively blocks SHP2-mediated ERK1/2 and AKT activation and attenuates melanoma cell viability, migration and colony formation. Most importantly, SHP2 inhibitor 11a-1 suppresses xenografted melanoma tumor growth, as a result of reduced tumor cell proliferation and enhanced tumor cell apoptosis. Taken together, our data reveal SHP2 as a novel target for melanoma and suggest SHP2 inhibitors as potential novel therapeutic agents for melanoma treatment.

Expression and prognosis value of SHP2 in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

SHP2 is an src homology (SH) 2 domain-containing protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTP). SHP2 implicitly contributes to tumorigenesis, but the role of SHP2 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is still unknown. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic significance and associated expression of SHP2 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patients. We used immunohistochemistry to assess the protein expression levels of SHP2 in 79 PDAC specimens. The correlations between SHP2 expression and various clinicopathological features were evaluated by Pearson's chi-square (χ (2)) test, Fisher's exact test, and Spearman's rank. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used to identify correlations between the immunohistochemical data for SHP2 expression and the clinicopathologic characteristics in PDAC. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was used to demonstrate the relation between overall survival and the expression of SHP2. Immunohistochemistry revealed significantly higher rates of high SHP2 expression in PDAC tissues (55.7 %) versus adjacent non-cancer tissues (10.1 %) (P < 0.05). Expression of SHP2 was only significantly correlated with histological differentiation (P = 0.033) and vital status (P = 0.025). Patients with high SHP2 expression had shorter overall survival times compared to those with low SHP2 expression (P = 0.000). Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that SHP2 overexpression was an independent prognostic factor in PDAC (P = 0.012). Our study demonstrated for the first time that higher expression of SHP2 might be involved in the progression of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, suggesting that SHP2 may be a potential prognostic marker and target for therapy.