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Concordant correlation of LIV-1 and E-cadherin expression in human breast cancer cell MCF-7

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Abstract

The recent report highlighted a significant association between signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and Snail and LIV-1 (SLC39A6 or ZIP6), the breast cancer-associated protein that belongs to a new subfamily of zinc transporters. LIV-1 is a downstream target of STAT3, both in zebrafish and mammalian cells and provides control over epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Crucially, these observations link LIV-1, previously demonstrated to be associated with lymph node metastasis in breast cancer, to genes with a proven role in development. A putative role of LIV-1 as a regulator of E-cadherin that modulates the cell-cell adhesion is thus inferred. In present study, the correlation of LIV-1 and E-cadherin expression in human breast cancer cell MCF-7 and the effect of LIV-1 expression on the cell growth were assessed to explore the possible mechanisms associated with this observation in breast cancer. It was shown that the silencing of LIV-1 would induce the down-expression of E-cadherin. There was opposite results if the cells were overexpressed with LIV-1. In addition, the results showed that promotion effect after silencing of LIV-1 and inhibition effect after overexpression of LIV-1 in transfected cells. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that the expression of E-cadherin could be regulated by the zinc transporter LIV-1. The results suggest that there is an association of LIV-1 expression with less aggressive tumors due to high E-cadherin expression because of high LIV-1 expression. LIV-1 may be a regulator of E-cadherin.

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Abbreviations

STAT3:

Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3

EMT:

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition

ZIP:

Zrt-, Irt-like proteins

LZT:

LIV-1 subfamily of ZIP zinc transporters

RT-PCR:

Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction

MTT:

3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide

MT:

Metallothioneins

CDF:

Cation diffusion facilitator

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. K. M. Taylor (Tenovus Cancer Research Centre, Welsh School of Pharmacy, Cardiff University, U.K.) for kindly providing us the LIV-1 recombinant. We also thank Dr. Qiuli Chen for her excellent technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Military Hygiene, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200433, P.R. China

    Hui Shen, Haihong Qin & Junsheng Guo

Authors
  1. Hui Shen
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  2. Haihong Qin
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  3. Junsheng Guo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hui Shen.

Additional information

H. Shen and H. Qin are contributed equally to this work.

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Shen, H., Qin, H. & Guo, J. Concordant correlation of LIV-1 and E-cadherin expression in human breast cancer cell MCF-7. Mol Biol Rep 36, 653–659 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-008-9225-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-008-9225-4

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