Figure 1. The heat shock protein mot-2 plays a critical role in tumorigenesis.

Equal amounts of tumor tissue lysates from 48 patients with colon cancer (A) and 55 patients with breast cancer (B) along with matched adjacent normal tissue lysates were probed with anti-mot-2 and anti-actin antibodies followed by quantitation and normalization of signals. A–B. These two diagrams show densitometry-quantified signals of mot-2 expression in tumor tissue versus normal adjacent tissue. The expression of mot-2 in the tumor tissues of patients diagnosed with colon cancer (A) and breast cancer (B) was significantly higher as compared to normal tissues (Colon tumor: R² = 0.46 and P < 0.001, Breast tumor: R² = 0.07 and P < 0.05, correlation coefficient test for each pair of variables). C. Overexpression of mot-2 in colon cancer is gender-dependent. Higher numbers of male patients show overexpression of mot-2 as compared to female patients. D. Overexpression of mot-2 in breast cancer is age-dependent. The statistical analysis shows that a relatively higher number of young female patients showed over-expression of mot-2 levels. E–H. Profiling of grade- and stage-dependent of tumors with colon (E and G) and breast (F and H) cancer showed that patients with mot-2 overexpression have been diagnosed with a higher grade and stage of tumors, indicating poorer survival. These clinical results confirm mot-2 as a potential target for the treatment of cancers and a promising prognostic factor.