Placental choriocarcinoma is a highly malignant tumor of the female reproductive organs. Even with chemotherapy, placental choriocarcinoma has a 20% mortality rate due to its indistinct pathogenesis and the absence of efficient therapeutic methods for this cancer. Wnt proteins and Wnt signaling are involved in a variety of developmental and cellular processes, and aberrant activation of Wnt signaling is linked to carcinogenesis in many types of tissue. In the present study, using immunostaining and reverse transcription PCR, we found that Wnt5a was prominently expressed in human primary cytotrophoblast cells, but absent in the human choriocarcinoma cell line JAR. This implies that there is a previously unknown correlation between Wnt5a and placental choriocarcinoma. Furthermore, we found that the addition of exogenous recombinant Wnt5a protein to the JAR cells repressed their proliferation and induced apoptosis, indicating that Wnt5a has a tumor suppressive effect in placental choriocarcinoma. In conclusion, the results of the present study suggest that there is a correlation between Wnt5a and human placental choriocarcinoma; therefore, Wnt5a has a potential use in the treatment of this malignancy.

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