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Hypoxia, a critical regulator of tumor growth and metastasis, induces the transcriptional activation of several pathways involved in proliferation, migration and invasion. Gankyrin was found to be overexpressed, and also promoted the metastasis in breast cancer cells, which is also involved in the regulation of hypoxia inducible factor‑1 and hypoxia‑inducible factor‑1α. The present study showed that gankyrin mRNA and protein expression were increased under hypoxic conditions in the BT474 breast cancer cell line, accompanied with increased ability of cell migration and invasion. Lentivirus‑mediated siRNA targeting gankyrin was transfected into BT474 cells. Wound‑healing and transwell experiments showed that gankyrin deletion abrogated the increased migration and invasion of BT474 cells due to hypoxia. In addition, E‑cadherin was found to be involved in the gankyrin induced invasion of breast cancer cells due to hypoxia. The present study indicated that gankyrin deletion abrogated the increased metastatic potential of breast cancer cells under hypoxic conditions partly through regulating E‑cadherin, suggesting that an improved understanding of gankyrin may offer a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of human breast cancer metastasis.

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Aim: To study the relationship between primary structures of oligodeoxynucleotides (ODN) containing unmethylated deoxycytidyl-deoxyguanosine (CpG) dinucleotide motifs and their immunostimulatory activities in mouse spleen cells. Methods: A series of CpG ODN with different primary structures were synthesized. Their capabilities to stimulate mouse spleen cell proliferation were determined by Cr-release assay. Flow cytometry was utilized to examine the expressions of various lymphocyte surface molecules on diverse immunocytes. An effective CpG ODN for murine, ODN1826, was set as the template of modification and the positive control. Results: The immunostimulatory activities of CpG ODN with different sequences and compositions varied markedly, both in character and in extent. It was useless for improving the immunostimulatory activity of ODN1826 by simply increasing the functional hexameric CpG motif number, modifying the site of CpG motifs, or changing the distance between multi-CpG motifs. However, an addition of a selfcomplementary palindrome structure at the 3'-end, but not the 5'-end of CpG ODN, aroused marked improvement in its activity. Several designed ODN had superior comprehensive immunostimulatory properties compared to ODN1826. Conclusion: The immunostimulatory activity of a CpG ODN was relevant to its primary structure. It was useless for promoting immunostimulatory activity to simply change CpG motif number, space, or distance. The 3'-end palindrome structure of CpG ODN is associated with enhanced immunostimulatory activity.

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