Differential Expression Profile of ZFX Variants Discriminates Breast Cancer Subtypes

Abstract

Background: ZFX is a transcriptional regulator in embryonic stem cells and plays an important role in pluripotency and self-renewal. ZFX is widely expressed in pluripotent stem cells and is down-regulated during differentiation of embryonic stem cells. ZFX has five different variants that encode three different protein isoforms. While several reports have determined the overexpression of ZFX in a variety of somatic cancers, the expression of ZFX-spliced variants in cancer cells is not well-understood. Methods: We investigated the expression of ZFX variants in a series of breast cancer tissues and cell lines using quantitative PCR. Results: The expression of ZFX variant 1/3 was higher in tumor tissue compared to marginal tissue. In contrast, the ZFX variant 5 was down-regulated in tumor tissues. While the ZFX variant 1/3 and ZFX variant 5 expression significantly increased in low-grade tumors, ZFX variant 4 was strongly expressed in high-grade tumors, demonstrating lymphatic invasion. In addition, our result revealed a significant association between the HER2 status and the expression of ZFX-spliced variants. Conclusion: Our data suggest that the expression of ZFX-spliced transcripts varies between different types of breast cancer and may contribute to their tumorigenesis process. Hence, ZFX-spliced transcripts could be considered as novel tumor markers with a probable value in diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of breast cancer.

Expression and function of long non-coding RNA DLX6-AS1 in endometrial cancer

“…Yang et al (2020) found augmented expression of ZFX in EC tissues (Yang et al, 2021). The same expression tendency of ZFX has also been reported by Pourkeramati et al (2019) who unraveled increased ZFX levels in breast cancer tissues (Pourkeramati et al, 2019). Functionally, elevated ZFX levels resulted in active pancreatic cancer cells and accelerated tumor growth in vivo (Song et al, 2018).…”