Project description:Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide with increasing incidence, the presence of metastasis is one of the major causes for poor outcome. BEX2 has been reported to be involved in tumor development in several types of cancer, but is poorly understood in metastatic colorectal cancer. Here we demonstrated that knockout of BEX2 resulted in the enhancement of the migratory and metastatic potential of colorectal cancer cells in vivo and in vitro, re-expression of BEX2 in knockout cells could reverse the migratory enhancement. Expression profile chip indicated that hedgehog signaling pathway was activated after knockout of BEX2, and hedgehog Signaling inhibitor GANT61 and GDC-0449 could somehow reverse the migratory enhancement of BEX2-/- colorectal cancer cells. We also demonstrated that it is the nucleus translocation of Zic2 after BEX2 silenced, that activated hedgehog signaling pathway, while knockdown Zic2 could also abrogated migratory enhancement of BEX2-/- cells. In summary, our findings suggest that BEX2 is a negative modulator of hedgehog signaling pathway by retaining Zic2 in the cytoplasm of colorectal cancer cells, thus to inhibit colorectal cancer cell migration and metastasis.
Project description:Abberant expression and protein localization of ESM1 were found in prostate cancer. The high expression of ESM1 is associated with prostate cancer stemness and progression. Thus, ESM1 is clinically relevant to poor overall survival and metastasis. However, the molecular mechanisms by which ESM1 contribute to prostate cancer is not yet understood. To discover the role of ESM1 mislocalization in prostate cancer, RNA-seq analysis was performed on 22Rv1 cells overexpressing with different ESM1. Our study demonstrate that nuclear ESM1 may support prostate cancer stemness by interacting with the ARM domain of β-catenin to stabilize β-catenin-Tcf4 complex and facilitate the transactivation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling targets. Our results establish the significance of ESM1 in driving metastasis in prostate cancer by coordinating the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, with implication for its potential use as a diagnostic or prognostic biomarker and as a candidate therapeutic target in prostate cancer.
Project description:Oncogenic cell-surface membrane proteins contribute to the phenotypic and functional characteristics of cancer stem cells (CSCs). We quantitatively analyzed cell-surface membrane proteins that are in close proximity to CD147 in CSCs using proximity-labeling proteomic approach. Moreover, we compared CSCs to non-CSCs to identify CSC-specific cell-surface membrane proteins that are the nearest neighbors of CD147 and revealed that lateral interaction between CD147 and CD276 (B7H3) concealed within the lipid raft microdomain in CSCs confers resistance to docetaxel, known to treat many types of cancer patients including metastatic breast cancer. Furthermore, we found that co-expression of CD147 and CD276 in patients with HER2+ breast cancer who received chemotherapy had poor disease-free survival (DFS) and Overall survival (OS) rates (p = 0.04 and 0.08, respectively). Subsequent immunohistochemical analysis indicated that co-expression of CD147 and CD276 may be associated with poor response to chemotherapy in an independent HER2+ BC cohort. Altogether, our study suggests that the lateral interaction between CD147 and its proximal partners, such as CD276, may be related to a poor prognostic factor in BC and a predictive marker for the critical phenotypic determinant of breast cancer stemness.