PLoS ONE (Jan 2011)

GLUT 5 is not over-expressed in breast cancer cells and patient breast cancer tissues.

  • Gayatri Gowrishankar,
  • Sabine Zitzmann-Kolbe,
  • Anitha Junutula,
  • Robert Reeves,
  • Jelena Levi,
  • Ananth Srinivasan,
  • Kjerstin Bruus-Jensen,
  • John Cyr,
  • Ludger Dinkelborg,
  • Sanjiv S Gambhir

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026902
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 11
p. e26902

Abstract

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F18 2-Fluoro 2-deoxyglucose (FDG) has been the gold standard in positron emission tomography (PET) oncologic imaging since its introduction into the clinics several years ago. Seeking to complement FDG in the diagnosis of breast cancer using radio labeled fructose based analogs, we investigated the expression of the chief fructose transporter-GLUT 5 in breast cancer cells and human tissues. Our results indicate that GLUT 5 is not over-expressed in breast cancer tissues as assessed by an extensive immunohistochemistry study. RT-PCR studies showed that the GLUT 5 mRNA was present at minimal amounts in breast cancer cell lines. Further knocking down the expression of GLUT 5 in breast cancer cells using RNA interference did not affect the fructose uptake in these cell lines. Taken together these results are consistent with GLUT 5 not being essential for fructose uptake in breast cancer cells and tissues.