The results indicated that PAK2 was overexpressed in the cancer tissues, which indicated high pTNM stage, poor tumor grade, lymph node metastasis and vascular invasion.
Moreover, the c-Myc complementation rescued PAK2 depletion effects and restored aerobic glycolysis, proliferation, migration and invasion in PAK2-depleted cells.
On the other hand, Pak1, Pak4 and p-Pak4 expression negatively correlated with histological grade (all P<0.05) while p-Pak2 and cytoplasmic Pak4 expression inversely correlated with myometrial invasion (all P<0.05).
By whole genome array analysis of host cells of the invasion front and subsequent immunohistochemical staining we identified p21 activated kinase-2 (PAK-2) as being strongly and specifically expressed by HSC.