A plausible anti-apoptotic role of up-regulated OCT4B1 in bladder tumors

Purpose: To investigate and compare the expression of OCT4B1 between tumor and non-tumor bladder tissues. Materials and Methods: We investigated the expression of OCT4B1 in 30 tumor and non-tumor surgical specimens of the bladder, using the TaqMan real-time polymerase chain reaction approach and by carefully designing primers and probes specific for the amplification of the variant. Results: Most tumor and non-tumor samples of the bladder showed OCT4B1 expression, but its expression level was significantly higher in the tumors (P <.002). Moreover, the up-regu-lation of OCT4B1 was more significant in high-grade tumors compared to the low-grade ones (P <.05). We have also employed the RNA interference strategy to evaluate the functional role of OCT4B1 in a bladder cancer cell line, 5637. Suppression of OCT4B1 caused some changes in cell cycle distribution, and significantly elevated the rate of apoptosis in the cells. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that OCT4B1 plays a potential role in tumor initiation and/or progression of the bladder cancer. Additionally, OCT4B1 can be regarded as a new tumor marker for detection, classification, and treatment of the bladder cancer. However, more ex-perimental studies are needed to replicate our findings