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Downregulation of FOXP2 promoter human hepatocellular carcinoma cell invasion

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Tumor Biology

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major health concern with a high morbidity and mortality rate worldwide. However, the mechanism underlying hepatocarcinogenesis remains unclear. Forkhead box P2 (FOXP2) has been implicated in various human cancer types. However, the role of FOXP2 in HCC remains unknown. Western blot and immunohistochemistry were used to measure the expression of FOXP2 protein in HCC and adjacent normal tissues in 50 patients. Wound healing and transwell assays were used to determine the cell invasion ability. We showed that the level of FOXP2 was significantly reduced in HCC compared with the adjacent non-tumorous tissue. There was statistical significance between the expression of FOXP2 and vein invasion (P = 0.017), number of tumor nodes (P = 0.028), and AFP (P = 0.033). Low expression of FOXP2 correlated with poor survival. Moreover, wound healing and transwell assays showed that FOXP2 could decrease cell invasion and affect the expression of vimentin and E-cadherin. Our results suggested that FOXP2 expression was downregulated in HCC tumor tissues, and reduced FOXP2 expression was associated with poor overall survival. In addition, downregulation of FOXP2 significantly enhanced cell invasiveness. These findings uncover that FOXP2 might be a new prognostic factor and be closely correlated with HCC cell invasion.

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Compliance with ethical standards

We investigated 50 cases of liver cancer provided by the Surgery Department at the Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University. Ethics committee approval was obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee of Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University to the commencement of the study, and written informed consent was obtained from every patient.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Neuroregeneration, Nantong University, Nantong, 226001, Jiangsu, China

    Xia Yan, Tingting Zhang, Linlin Yang, Xingxing Gu & Tianyi Zhang

  2. Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory for Inflammation and Molecular Drug Target, Nantong University, Nantong, 226019, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Xia Yan, Huiling Zhou, Tingting Zhang, Pan Xu, Shusen Zhang, Wei Huang, Linlin Yang, Xingxing Gu & Tianyi Zhang

  3. Department of Gastroenterology, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, Nantong, 226001, Jiangsu, China

    Huiling Zhou, Tingting Zhang, Pan Xu, Shusen Zhang, Wei Huang, Linlin Yang, Xingxing Gu, Runzhou Ni & Tianyi Zhang

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  1. Xia Yan
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Correspondence to Tianyi Zhang.

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Yan, X., Zhou, H., Zhang, T. et al. Downregulation of FOXP2 promoter human hepatocellular carcinoma cell invasion. Tumor Biol. 36, 9611–9619 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13277-015-3701-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13277-015-3701-y

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