Med19 promotes gastric cancer progression and cellular growth.

Med19 was a member of the Mediator complex which forms the bridge between transcriptional activators and RNA polymerase II. We aim to investigate the functional role of Med19 in the progression of human gastric carcinoma. The correlation between Med19 expression and clinicopathologic features in 60 gastric carcinoma specimens was analyzed by using immunohistochemistry. Recombinant lentivirus expressing Med19 short hairpin RNA (shRNA) was constructed and infected into human gastric carcinoma SGC7901 and MGC803 cells. MTT, colony formation and cell cycle analysis were used to study the effect of Med19 shRNA on gastric cancer cell proliferation. Expression of Med19 was associated with tumor size, cancer cell differentiation, and TNM stages (P<0.05). Downregulation of Med19 significantly inhibited cell proliferation and colony-formation capacity, and induced G1 phase cell-cycle arrest. Collectively, Med19 functions in promoting cellular growth and may be a useful therapeutic target in malignant gastric carcinoma.