Abstract: Objective To investigate the expression change of WTAP gene in clinical gastric cancer samples and its functional significance in gastric carcinogenesis. Methods The WTAP mRNA was detected by qRT-PCR in 45 cases of gastric cancer samples and their paired adjacent normal control tissues. The expression of WTAP mRNA was subjected to analysis combined with patients’ clinical pathological data. The effects of WTAP knock-down on cell proliferation, cell migration and invasion were detected by CCK-8, wounding heal and trans-well assays, respectively. Results The expression of WTAP mRNA in gastric tumor tissues was significantly lower than the adjacent tissues (p<0.05), and was closely related with gastric cancer clinical stage (p<0.05). Furthermore, knock-down of WTAP in MGC-803 cells could promote cell proliferation, cell migration and invasion. Conclusions WTAP was down-regulated in gastric cancers, and it might sever as a tumor suppressor gene in gastric carcinogenesis.

Key words: gastric cancer, WTAP, MGC-803