Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Oct 22:14:1445978.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1445978. eCollection 2024.

The relationship between keratin 18 and epithelial-derived tumors: as a diagnostic marker, prognostic marker, and its role in tumorigenesis

Jiazhi Yan #  1 , Aiwei Yang #  1 , Shuo Tu  2
Affiliations
Review

The relationship between keratin 18 and epithelial-derived tumors: as a diagnostic marker, prognostic marker, and its role in tumorigenesis

Jiazhi Yan et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

As a structural protein, keratin is mainly expressed in epithelial cells and skin appendages to provide mechanical support and external resistance. The keratin family has a total of 54 members, which are divided into type I and type II. Two types of keratins connect to each other to form keratin intermediate filaments and participate in the construction of the cytoskeleton. K18 is a non-hair keratin, which is widely expressed in simple epithelial tissues with its partner, K8. Compared with mechanical support, K8/K18 pairs play more important roles in biological regulation, such as mediating anti-apoptosis, regulating cell cycle progression, and transmitting signals. Mutations in K18 can cause a variety of non-neoplastic diseases of the visceral epithelium. In addition, the expression levels of K18 are frequently altered in various epithelial-derived tumors, especially adenocarcinomas, which suggests that K18 may be involved in tumorigenesis. Due to the specific expression pattern of K18 in tumor tissues and its serum level reflecting tumor cell death, apply K18 to diagnose tumors and predict its prognosis have the potential to be simple and effective alternative methods. However, these potential roles of K18 in tumors have not been fully summarized. In this review, we focus on the relationship between K18 and epithelial-derived tumors, discuss the value of K18 as a diagnostic and prognostic marker, and summarize the interactions of K18 with various related proteins in tumorigenesis, with examples of simple epithelial tumors such as lung, breast, liver, and gastrointestinal cancers.

Keywords: diagnostic marker; epithelial-derived tumors; intermediate filament; keratin 18; prognostic marker; tumorigenesis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Fletcher DA, Mullins RD. Cell mechanics and the cytoskeleton. Nature. (2010) 463:485–92. doi: 10.1038/nature08908 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Goodson HV, Jonasson EM. Microtubules and microtubule-associated proteins. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. (2018) 10. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a022608 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rogers SL, Gelfand VI. Membrane trafficking, organelle transport, and the cytoskeleton. Curr Opin Cell Biol. (2000) 12:57–62. doi: 10.1016/S0955-0674(99)00057-5 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Henderson CA, Gomez CG, Novak SM, Mi-Mi L, Gregorio CC. Overview of the muscle cytoskeleton. Compr Physiol. (2017) 7:891–944. doi: 10.1002/cphy.c160033 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Xiao Q, Hu X, Wei Z, Tam KY. Cytoskeleton molecular motors: structures and their functions in neuron. Int J Biol Sci. (2016) 12:1083–92. doi: 10.7150/ijbs.15633 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

LinkOut - more resources