2.1 Patients and specimens
Histologically confirmed 74 tissue samples from OS patients were collected from Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China. Research protocols were completely approved by the Hospital Ethics Committee of Shandong University and written informed consent was obtained from every patients on the basis of the Declaration of Helsinki. Surgically resected tissue samples were reserved at −80°C after quick frozen in liquid nitrogen first.
2.2 Cell extraction and culture
The human K-HOS and MG-63 cell lines were obtained from the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), and then kept properly in a sterile humidified incubator containing 5% CO2 using 10% FBS EMEM at 37 °C.
2.3 Mice experiments
For the animal experiments, we have got approvment from the Shandong University Animal Care and Use Committee and performed completely under the guidelines. For subcutaneous inoculation, OS cells were first obtained from cell culture plates and washed using PBS. 5 × 106 K-HOS cells was Suspended in 100ul PBS before injected subcutaneously into the 4-week-old nude mice(male). The volumes of tumor were measured and calculated as (large diameter × smaller diameter)2 / 2 every three days. K-HOS cells suspended in PBS at 1 × 106/ml and then injecte 0.1 ml solution into the mice left cardiac ventricles of 4-week-old male nude mice using 26G needles.
2.4 Establishment of ghrelin stable expressing and knockdown cell lines
cDNA sequences of Wide type ghrelin was constructed into PLVX-AcGFP-N1 vector before experiments. shRNA sequences of ghrelin gene were cloned into pLKO.1-puro vector. Plasmid overexpressing ghrelin were constructed and transfected into 293 T cells using E.coli strain Stbl3 as well as the silencing plasmid, combined with psPAX and PMD2.G with the application of Transfection Reagent Lipofectamine 3000 (Invitrogen). A 0.4 μm filter membrane was used to filter the supernatant after 72 hours. Cells were plated as a density of 50–60% cells to be transfected by lentivirus particles, and this experiment is conducted in a 12-well plate. Establishment of stable cell lines can be estimated byRT-qPCR and Western blot after 1 week selecton by puromycin.
2.5 RNA isolation and real-time RT-qPCR
To perform the RT-qPCR assay, TRIzol Reagent was used. RevertAid First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit was used for reverse transcription(Thermo, Waltham, MA, USA). ABI PRISM 7900HT Real-Time PCR detection system (Eppendorf,Germany) and SYBR Green PCR Master Mix (Thermo,USA) were used in the RT-qPCRassay.
2.6 Western blot analysis
A protease inhibitor cocktail (APExBIO, China) was added to RIPA lysis buffer (Beyotime Biotechnology, China) to obtain protein extracts. In this study, the concentration ofwas determined by a BCA protein assay kit. We mixed proteins with loading buffer (EpiZyme, China) and boiled them for 5 minutes for 4 min before running 10% SDS-PAGE (EpiZyme, China). After the proteins was transferred to a PVDF membrane (Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA), We blocked membranes with 5% BSA (Sangon Biotech, China) for 1 h, then incubated them with primary antibodies overnight in 3% BSA. After the 1 h incubation with secondary antibody and then being washed in TBST again, the protein bands were captured by photographic film (Kodak) with the help of chemiluminescence liquid (Millipore).
2.7 Immunohistochemistry
Paraffin sections were prepared using 10% formalin-fixed samples and 3% hydrogen peroxide-blocked samples. The antigen was retrieved at over 92°C for 20 minutes in citrate buffer (10 mm, pH-6). Primary antibodies to ghrelin (1:50, Cell Signaling Technology) were first incubated on tissue sections for 16 hours at 4°C before the incubation with secondary antibodies (SP-9000, Sigma-Aldrich) for 30 min at 37°C.
2.8 Cell viability and proliferation asssy
This study used Dojindo's Cell Counting Kit-8 (Kumamoto, Japan) to detect cell viability and proliferation. To get to know the cell viability, 3 × 103 cells were plated in a 96-well plate. Cell Counting Kit-8 solution was added to each well after 16 hours of incubation at 37°C. Then optical density (OD) values were tested at 450 nm using a multi-well scanning spectrophotometer (Multiskan MK3; Thermo Fisher Scientific). To get to know the cell proliferation, the OD values were measured accordingly at 72 h, 48 h, 24 h, and 12 h.
2.9 ATP test
K-HOS and MG-63 cells were collected from 6 wells cultured with MEM. And 1.5 ml tubes was used to collect the cell pellet. After washed with PBS thoroughly, and 200 μl lysis buffer was added and ultrasonically probed. The lysate was centrifuged at 4°C at 12000× g for 5 min. the ATP detection kit supplied by Beyotime (China) was used to test the ATP levels. Relative ATP level was calculated as ATP value / protein value. Multiscan MK3 by Bio-Rad (Finland) was used to measure the protein concentration at 562 nm.
2.10 Cell migration and invasion assay
Invasion assay was performed within chambers (BD, 3097) which was pre-coated with matrigel (BD, 354605) and kept at 37°C for 30 minutes. A 10% FBS-EMEM medium was used in the lower chambers and the upper chambers were plated with 1 × 105 in 200 μl EMEM without FBS. To examine the cell migration, 3 × 104 cells wtih 200 µl EMEM serum-free were placed in the upper chamber without matrigel. The chambers were incubated at 37 °C for 20 h in a sterile humidified incubator containing 5% CO2. non-invading cells in the upper chamber were gently wiped off, while a 15-minute fixation in methanol at room temperature was followed by a 20-minute staining with 0.5% crystal violet.
2.11 Wound healing assay
We performed wounds in 60 mm dish after OS cells have been treated with Dlys and grown to 90–100% density. Olympus IX70 inverted microscope was applied to capture the images at 0 hour and 24 hours after washing the floated cells twice with PBS to remove them.
2.12 Apoptosis assay
Cells were harvested and washed twice in cold PBS before being resuspended in binding buffer at a density of 2 to 5 × 105/ml. 5 μl Annexin V-FITC (1% BSA, 100 mm NaCl, 50 mm TRIS, 0.02% Sodium Azide, pH 7.4) was added, the suspension was added to 190 μl binding buffer (1×) and 10 μl polyimide (PI) protected from light after at room temperature in 10 minutes. FACS-scan flow cytometers (Becton-Dickinson, San Jose, CA, USA) were used to analyze the status of cells, and Cell Quest analysis software (Becton-Dickinson) was used to determine cell apoptosis levels.
2.13 Immunofluorescent staining
We first fixed coverslips in 4% PFA for 15 min, then permeabilized the coverslips with 0.1% Triton X-100 at room temperature. The cells were then blocked 30 min with 5% BSA before reserved in the solution containing primary antibody at 4 °C. and then one hour incubation with secondary antibodies was performed. Hoechst 33342 (1:1000 in PBS) was used in this assay to dye the cell nuclei.the slides were coated by anti-fade mounting medium (Beyotime, China). Further fluorescence microscopy was used to analyze microscopic images at magnifications of 200x and 630x.
2.14 5‑ethynyl‑2′‑deoxyuridine proliferation assay
The 5-ethynyl-2ʹ-deoxyuridine (EdU) assay was conducted by the application of EdU Kit (Byotime, China). placed on 24-well plates, Cells were primarily cultured with cis-platinum for 24 h with or without ghrelin, then add 10 μm EdU in and keep it for 2 h. Next, after fixed with 4% polyformaldehyde, cells were treated for 30 min with Apollo staining solution. the percentage of EdU-positive cells were counted using fluorescence microscopy. the number of all cells and proliferating cells was recorded by Image J sofetware.
2.15 Bioluminescence imaging in vivo
After 28 d, bioluminescence imagingwas applied to monitore bone metastasis with the IVIS Imaging System (Caliper Life Sciences). Base Labelling Index (BLI) analysis was conducted with Living Image software.
2.16 Statistical analysis
All data in this study were recorded as mean values ± standard deviation (SD). For the analysis of the fold change between groups, Perseus had been used to test multiple hypotheses using FDR. Log-rank tests were used to compare the results of the Kaplan-Meier and log-rank survival analyses. Differences between two groups were analyzed by Student’s t-test, and for the Differences among more than two groups, one-way ANOVA was performed. Statistical significance was determined by P < 0.05. To analyze the impact of clinical features on ghrelin expression, Pearson chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests were applied. Cox proportional hazard model is applied to identify the related factors of patients’ survival rate. the GraphPad Prism Software was used in this study for All statistical analyses.