Transmembrane prostate androgen-induced protein (TMEPAI, also called prostate transmembrane protein, androgen induced 1 [PMEPA1]), is a type I transmembrane (TM) protein, but its cellular function is largely unknown. Here, studying factors influencing the stability of c-Maf, a critical transcription factor in multiple myeloma (MM), we found that TMEPAI induced c-Maf degradation. We observed that TMEPAI recruited neural precursor cell expressed, developmentally down-regulated 4 (NEDD4), a WW domain-containing ubiquitin ligase, to c-Maf, leading to its degradation through the proteasomal pathway. Further investigation revealed that TMEPAI interacts with NEDD4 via its conserved PY motifs. Alanine substitution or deletion of these motifs abrogated the TMEPAI complex formation with NEDD4, resulting in failed c-Maf degradation. Functionally, TMEPAI suppressed the transcriptional activity of c-Maf. Of note, increased TMEPAI expression was positively associated with the overall survival of MM patients. Moreover, (1). In addition to androgen, TMEPAI expression is also stimulated by some growth factors such as epidermal growth factor (EGF) and transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) (2). The expression profiling found that TMEPAI is overexpressed in solid cancers including prostate cancer , lung (3,4), breast (3,5) and ovarian cancers (6), and rental cell carcinoma (7), but it is not detectable in liquid cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma samples (7). The specific expression pattern suggests that TMEPAI might function differently upon specific cancer types. For example, TMEPAI displays as a tumor suppressor in prostate cancer progression because silence of TMEPAI leads to accelerated proliferation of prostate cancer cells (8) while expression of TMEPAI inhibits prostate cancer cell growth (9) and prevents its bone metastasis (10). However, TMEPAI acts as an oncogene and promotes proliferation and survival of lung and breast cancers. TMEPAI mediates the degradation of receptor-activated SMAD and activates non-canonical PI3K/AKT signaling transduction thus promoting TGF-β-dependent cell growth and metastasis of triple negative breast cancer (3). In lung cancer cells, TMEPAI not only increases cancer cell proliferation, migration and invasion (11,12) but also enhances tumorigenicity and the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of lung cancer cells (4). These actions were associated with TMEPAI-induced TGF-β degradation in lysosomes and TMEPAI-induced reactive oxygen species and insulin receptor substrate-1 (4). In contrast, knockdown of TMEPAI enhances Smad2 phosphorylation and significantly suppressed lung cancer cell proliferation in the presence of TGF-β. All the above results collectively suggest that TMEPAI can promote or suppress cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth depending on the cancer types but the TGF-β signaling pathway is a key factor.Hematological malignancies are a collection of blood cancers including leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma in which TMEPAI is less expressed (7), but the fun...