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Mitotic checkpoint kinase Mps1/TTK predicts prognosis of colon cancer patients and regulates tumor proliferation and differentiation via PKCα/ERK1/2 and PI3K/Akt pathway

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Abstract

Mps1/TTK plays an important role in development of many tumors. The purpose of the present study was designed to investigate the role of TTK in colon cancer. We analyzed TTK and colon cancer in the GEO database, colon cancer tissues and normal tissues were collected to verify the results by immunohistochemistry. We detected the TTK expression in the colon cancer cell lines, and overexpressed or silenced TTK expression in colon cancer cell lines. GEO database showed that the expression of TTK was higher in the colon cancer tissues than normal tissues, higher level of TTK shows unfavourable prognosis in colon patients. Furthermore, high differentiation of colon shows the lower expression of TTK. The higher expression of TTK links with the high microsatellite status. However, the expression of TTK has no significant difference among the different stages of colon cancer patients, and has no significant relationship with recurrence or relapse. Here, we also report that the differential expression of TTK in colon cancer cells alters the intrinsic negative regulation of cell proliferation and differentiation, resulting in the difference of proliferation and differentiation capacity. TTK could activate the PKCα/ERK1/2 to influence the proliferation and inactivate the PI3K/AKT pathway to inhibition the expression of MUC2 and TFF3 that related to the differentiation of colon cells. In conclusions, TTK promote the colon cancer cell proliferation via activation of PKCα/ERK1/2 and inhibit the differentiation via inactivation of PI3K/Akt pathway. TTK inhibition may be the potential therapeutic pathway for the treatment of colon cancer.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81972739 and 81800149), and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20170455). Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2018CFB173). Research Project of HuBei Provincial Department of Education (Grant No. Q20172802). Transforming Medical Research Innovative Talents Project (Grant No. YZHT201901).

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  1. Li Zhang and Baofei Jiang have contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Central Laboratory and Huai’an Key Laboratory of Esophageal Cancer Biobank, The Affiliated Huaian No. 1 People’s Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai’an, 223300, China

    Li Zhang, Mingyue Tao, Yali Jun, Xiaofei Chen, Qilong Wang & Chao Luo

  2. Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The Affiliated Huaian No. 1 People’s Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huaian, 223300, Jiangsu, China

    Baofei Jiang

  3. Department of Microbiology, Hubei University of Science and Technology, Xianning, 437100, Hubei, China

    Ni Zhu

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  1. Li Zhang
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Correspondence to Xiaofei Chen, Qilong Wang or Chao Luo.

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Zhang, L., Jiang, B., Zhu, N. et al. Mitotic checkpoint kinase Mps1/TTK predicts prognosis of colon cancer patients and regulates tumor proliferation and differentiation via PKCα/ERK1/2 and PI3K/Akt pathway. Med Oncol 37, 5 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12032-019-1320-y

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