RESUMO
The present study aimed to investigate the effect of Dermatopontin (DPT) gene silencing on the apoptosis and proliferation of osteosarcoma MG63 cells. Three eukaryotic expression vectors of short hairpin (sh)RNA fragments targeting different loci of DPT were designed and transfected into an osteosarcoma cell line MG63. The cells were assigned to a blank, shRNAcontrol, DPTshRNAa, DPTshRNAb or DPTshRNAc group. The shRNA with the highest silencing efficiency was screened using reverse transcriptionquantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blotting. The screened shRNA was transfected into MG63 cells. The proliferation, cell cycle and apoptosis of MG63 cells were measured using a Cell Counting Kit8 assay, flow cytometry and Annexin Vfluorescein isothiocyanate assay. The recombinant plasmids containing DPT shRNA were successfully constructed. DPT gene silencing was able to significantly reduce the proliferation rate of MG63 cells (P<0.05). The proportion of cells in the G0/G1 phase and in the G2/M phase increased significantly (both P<0.05), while the proportion of cells in the S phase decreased (P<0.05). Furthermore, the cell apoptosis rate increased significantly (P<0.05). These results demonstrate that DPT gene silencing is able to reduce the proliferation of MG63 cells, slow down cell cycle progression and promote apoptosis, hence may become a novel target for the treatment of osteosarcoma.