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Overexpression of osteopontin promotes cell proliferation and migration in human nasopharyngeal carcinoma and is associated with poor prognosis

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Abstract

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), a malignant tumor at the top and side of the nasopharyngeal cavity, highly occurs in the southern region of China. Cancer cell metastasis is one of the leading causes of death in NPC patients. Osteopontin (OPN), is a phosphorylated extracellular matrix protein with a variety of functions, was found to be overexpressed in many cancers. However, the expression and role of OPN in patients with NPC in Guangxi, China are unclear. Here, we observed that NPC patients had upregulated OPN at mRNA protein and levels. Immunochemistry (IHC) analysis of OPN expression in 68 NPC clinical specimens indicated that high expression of OPN had positive correlation with NPC lymph node metastasis (P = 0.012), distant metastasis (P = 0.001) and TNM staging (P = 0.018). Moreover, compared with relatively low OPN, NPC patients with higher expression of OPN showed a poorer overall survival rate (P = 0.001, log rank test). Multivariate analysis showed that OPN expression in NPC was an independent prognostic marker. The proliferation, apoptosis and migration ability of CEN-2Z cancer cells in NPC were determined by MTT, flow cytometry and wound-healing assays, respectively. Upregulation of OPN in CEN-2Z cancer cells promoted cancer cell proliferation and migration, and suppressed apoptosis. In sum, our result suggests OPN could be used as a valuable oncoprotein and show that overexpression of OPN in NPC may serve as a potential prognostic marker.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Clinical Laboratory, Affiliated Hospital of Youjiang Medical College for Nationalities, Baise, 533000, Guangxi, China

    Haimei Qin, Rong Wang, Guijiang Wei, Guogang Pan, Rentong Hu, Yesheng Wei, Renguang Tang & Junli Wang

  2. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Affiliated Hospital of Youjiang Medical College for Nationalities, Baise, 533000, Guangxi, China

    Huaifei Wang

  3. Youjiang Medical College for Nationalities, Baise, 533000, Guangxi, China

    Haimei Qin & Rong Wang

Authors
  1. Haimei Qin
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  2. Rong Wang
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  3. Guijiang Wei
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  4. Huaifei Wang
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  7. Yesheng Wei
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  9. Junli Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Junli Wang.

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Funding

This study was supported by the Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (No. 2012GXNSFBA053121) and the Scientific Research Project of Guangxi Higher Educatio-n Institutions (No. KY2015ZD094).

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Animal and human rights

This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Haimei Qin and Rong Wang contributed equally to this work, and all should be considered first author.

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Qin, H., Wang, R., Wei, G. et al. Overexpression of osteopontin promotes cell proliferation and migration in human nasopharyngeal carcinoma and is associated with poor prognosis. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 275, 525–534 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-017-4827-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-017-4827-x

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