Investigation of transient receptor potential melastatin (TRPM)ion channels genes expressions in human bladder carcinomas

Bladder cancers are among the most seen cancers all over the world. It is the 7th most seen cancer in males and 17th in females. It is the second most seen cancer after lung cancer and the most seen cancer among the urogenitalial cancers in males. It usually occurs in the 6th and 7th decades. Although the frequency rate of males to females is 3:1, it causes usually to death in females (31%). Ion channels located in the plasma membrane are responsible from cellular electrogenesis and electricity transmission. These channels are involved in erforming the basic cellular functions like apopitosis, proliferation and differentiation to protect the tissue homeostasis. There are several main echanisms in contributing to this critical process. These are the protection of membrane potential, to regulate the cell volume and the entrance of ions which provides the basic signal transduction. The basic reason of abnormal tissue development is transformation of malign cells, impaired differentiation and disrupted death ability. This results in uncontrolled spread and invasion. Transformation usually occurs by the changes in ion channel expressions. The esult is the abnormal progression of cellular responses. Although some different expression and ion channel activities that regulate the formation and progression of cancer are suggested, to investigate the ion-channel related mechanisms in bladder cancer cells will be precious. 40 tissues of patients with transitional cell bladder cancer and 7 normal tissues of the same group are included to the study. Immunohistochemical expressions and mRNA expressions of TRPM2, TRPM4, 12 TRPM5, TRPM7 and TRPM8 by real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction were studied. Immunohistochemically, only TRPM2 was expressed in all of the tissues (epithelium cells, tumor cells, muscle cells), no TRPM5 expression was detected. TRPM4, TRPM7 and TRPM8 expressions were detected only in epithelium cells. mRNA ekspression of TRPM7 was significantly higher in study group according to control group. mRNA expressions of TRPM5 and TRPM8 were lower in study group according to control group. There was no statistically significant difference for mRNA expressions of TRPM2 and TRPM4. The effects of TRP ion channels in the development of bladder cancer will be searched. TRPM2, TRPM4, TRPM5, TRPM7 and TRPM8 can be important therapeutic targets for bladder cancer. We think that our results will provide new target genes for these ion channels at bladder cancer. So, in a later stage, these proteins can be targeted under invivo conditions and new bladder cancer therapy methods can be tried.