Abstract
Gastric cancer is the fourth most common type of malignant tumor, with a poor prognosis. Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) mediates the crosslink of intracellular signaling networks, playing a key role in cell migration and invasion. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of FAK interference on the proliferation ability, invasion and metastasis of gastric cancer cells. The FAK-RNAi lentiviral vector was infected into SGC7901 gastric cancer cells in order to observe the in vivo situations of tumor growth and metastasis before and after the FAK interference. The growth of SGC7901 gastric cancer cells in the interference group was significantly inhibited compared with that of the negative control (P<0.05) and the blank control groups (P<0.05), and the FAK expression significantly decreased (P<0.05). The in vitro invasion and metastasis experiments showed that the cell invasion and metastasis abilities of the interference group significantly decreased when compared with those of the negative control (P<0.05) and blank control groups (P<0.05). In the nude mouse subcutaneous tumor transplantation model, the mean ± standard deviation tumor weight of the interference group (1.474±0.9840 g) was lower than that of the negative control (3.134±0.3299 g) and blank control (2.68±0.12 g) groups (P<0.05). In the nude mice, the liver and peritoneal metastasis rates of the interference group were significantly lower than those of the negative control (P<0.05) and the blank control groups (P<0.05), and the FAK mRNA of the interference group significantly reduced (P<0.05). In conclusion, FAK interference could effectively suppress the proliferation, invasion and metastasis of transfected SGC7901 gastric cancer cells, and could inhibit the growth and distant metastasis of gastric cancer in nude mice.