Elevated phosphatase of regenerating liver 3 (PRL-3) promotes cytoskeleton reorganization, cell migration and invasion in endometrial stromal cells from endometrioma

Hong Zhan, Zhan H, Ma J, Junyan Ma, Fei Ruan, Ruan F, Mohamed A. Bedaiwy, Bo Peng, Ruijin Wu, Wu R, Jun Lin, Lin J
Human Reproduction · 2016 · vol. 31(4) , pp. 723–733 · doi:10.1093/humrep/dew015 · PMID:26874360 · W2286839279
Lab / animal OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 17 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-06 ⓘ

Elevated phosphatase of regenerating liver 3 (PRL-3) in endometrioma stromal cells promotes cytoskeleton reorganization, migration, and invasion by upregulating RhoA, RhoC, ROCK1, and MMP9.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

STUDY QUESTION: Is phosphatase of regenerating liver-3 (PRL-3) associated with increased motility of endometriotic cells from endometrioma? SUMMARY ANSWER: Elevated PRL-3 promotes cytoskeleton reorganization, cell migration and invasion of endometrial stromal cells (ESCs) from endometrioma. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Overexpression of PRL-3 is associated with cancer cell migration, invasion and metastatic phenotype. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: Primary human ESCs were isolated from eutopic endometrium of women without endometriosis (EuCo, n = 10), with histologically proven endometrioma (EuEM, n = 19) and from the cyst wall of ovarian endometriosis (OvEM, n = 26). PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: The expression of PRL-3 in ESCs derived from EuCo, EuEM and OvEM at different phases of menstrual cycle were compared. The protein and mRNA levels of PRL-3 were examined by western blot and RT-qPCR, respectively. ESCs from OvEM were transfected with/without short hairpin RNA (shRNA) or small interfering RNA (siRNA). Additionally, a plasmid-mediated delivery system was used to achieve PRL-3 overexpression in ESCs from EuEM. The cellular distribution of F-actin and α-tubulin were examined by immunocytochemistry. Cell motility was evaluated by a transwell migration/invasion assay. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: The protein and mRNA levels of PRL-3 are significantly elevated in ESCs from OvEM compared with EuCo and EuEM. The expression of PRL-3 was not altered between proliferative phase and secretory phase in ESCs from all groups. Knockdown of PRL-3 significantly modified the distribution of F-actin and α-tubulin cytoskeleton, inhibited cell migration and invasion. Endogenous inhibition of PRL-3 attenuated the expression of Ras homolog gene family members A and C (RhoA, RhoC), Rho-associated coiled-coil-containing protein kinase 1 (ROCK1) and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) 9, but not MMP2 in ESCs from OvEM. Additionally, overexpression of PRL-3 in ESCs from EuEM up-regulates cell migration and invasion, and increases the expression of RhoA, RhoC, ROCK1 and MMP9. LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: Lack of in vivo animal studies is the major limitation of our report. Our results should be further confirmed in a larger cohort of patients and extended to include eutopic and ectopic endometrium from patients with peritoneal endometriosis at different stages of the disease. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: Our study describes that elevated expression of PRL-3 contributes to the cell motility of ESCs from endometrioma. The results emphasize the importance of metastatic-related factor PRL-3 in the pathogenesis of endometrioma. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST: This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81170546) and Zhejiang Medicine Science and Technology Projects (No. Y13H040003). The authors declare no conflict of interest.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosisendometrioma

MeSH descriptors

Cytoskeleton Endometriosis Endometrium Enzyme Induction Enzyme Induction Neoplasm Proteins Ovarian Diseases Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases Stromal Cells Cell Movement Cell Movement Cells, Cultured Cells, Cultured Cytoskeleton Cytoskeleton Cytoskeleton Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometrium

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (44)

Cited by (17)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-10-15T06:08:49.021275+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-05-11T06:10:27.824888+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:17:17.422830+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK