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Up-regulation of SPOCK1 induces epithelial–mesenchymal transition and promotes migration and invasion in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

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Abstract

Invasion and metastasis are the major causes of death in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Recent studies have confirmed that SPARC/osteonectin, cwcv and kazal-like domains proteoglycan 1 (SPOCK1) plays multiple roles in cancer progression. This study aims to explore the clinical characteristics of SPOCK1 in ESCC and its roles in the migration and invasion of ESCC cell lines. In this study, the up-regulation of SPOCK1 expression was frequently detected in primary ESCC tumor tissues compared with those in non-tumor tissues, which was significantly associated with tumor invasion (p = 0.004) and distant metastasis (p = 0.010). SPOCK1 was expressed at higher level in TE13 cells as compared to the low malignant Eca109 and TE1 cells. Overexpression of SPOCK1 in Eca109 cells decreased the expressions of epithelial marker E-cadherin and ZO-1, while increased mesenchymal marker Vimentin and N-cadherin levels. After ectopic expression of SPOCK1, Eca109 cells exhibited a morphological change from an epithelial cobblestone phenotype to an elongated fibroblastic phenotype, concomitant with cytoskeletal rearrangements and increased migration and invasion, suggesting that EMT occurs. While silencing SPOCK1 in TE13 cells had the opposite effects. These results suggest that up-regulation of SPOCK1 in ESCC induces EMT, thus promotes migration and invasion in ESCC cells.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81270507, 81272657, 81472311, 81401992), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2014ZHYX020, 2014TS077), the Project sponsored by SRF for ROCS, SEM (2014-1685) and Hubei Province health and family planning scientific research project (WJ2015Q006).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standard

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Ethics Committee of the Tongji Hospital and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Gastroenterology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 1095# Jiefang Avenue, Wuhan, 430030, Hubei Province, China

      Xiaopeng Song, Ping Han, Jingmei Liu, Yunwu Wang, Dongxiao Li, Jiayi He, Jin Gong, Mengke Li, Wei Tu, Wei Yan, Mei Liu, Huanjun Huang, Dean Tian & Jiazhi Liao

    2. Department of Gastroenterology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, 2 Jingba Road, Zhengzhou, 450014, Henan Province, China

      Xiaopeng Song

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    1. Xiaopeng Song
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    Correspondence to Jiazhi Liao.

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    Xiaopeng Song and Ping Han have contributed equally to this work.

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    Song, X., Han, P., Liu, J. et al. Up-regulation of SPOCK1 induces epithelial–mesenchymal transition and promotes migration and invasion in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. J Mol Hist 46, 347–356 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10735-015-9627-2

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10735-015-9627-2

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