Health Care : Current Reviews

Reduced expression of SOX7 in ovarian cancer: A novel tumor suppressor through the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway

Global Healthcare & Fitness Summit

July 20-22, 2015 San Francisco, USA

Huidi Liu

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Health Care: Current Reviews

Abstract:

Products of the SOX gene family play important roles in the life process. One of the members, SOX7 is associated with the
development of a variety of cancers as a tumor suppression factor but its relevance with ovarian cancer was unclear. In this
study, we investigated the involvement of SOX7 in the progression and prognosis of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) and the
involved mechanisms. Expression profiles in two independent microarray data sets were analyzed for SOX7 between malignant
and normal tissues. The expression levels of SOX7 in EOC, borderline ovarian tumors and normal ovarian tissues were
measured by immunohistochemistry. We also measured levels of COX2 and cyclin-D1 to examine their possible involvement
in the same signal transduction pathway as SOX7. The expression of SOX7 was significantly reduced in ovarian cancer tissues
compared with normal controls strongly indicating that SOX7 might be a negative regulator in the Wnt/β-catenin pathway
in ovarian cancer. By immunohistochemistry staining, the protein expression of SOX7 showed a consistent trend with that
of the gene expression microarray analysis. By contrast, the protein expression level of COX2 and cyclin-D1 increased as the
tumor malignancy progressed suggesting that SOX7 may function through the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway as a tumor
suppressor. In comparison between the protein expression levels of SOX7 with pathological features of the cancer, we found
that SOX7 was down-regulated mainly in serous cystadenocarcinoma and advanced stages of the cancers. The expression of
SOX7 correlates with tumor progression as a tumor suppressor, possibly through the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway in
ovarian cancers suggesting that SOX7 may be a promising prognostic and therapeutic target.

Biography :

Huidi Liu has received her Master’s degree from Harbin Medical University (HMU), China with a major in Physiology. After her graduation in 2011, she joined the
Genomic Research Center at HMU and worked on genomic research of ovarian cancer and natural anti-cancer drugs. Presently, she is a PhD Student of Professor
Shu-Lin Liu in HMU and has published four papers. Besides research, she teaches a course on Bacterial Systematics. Recently, she has been appointed Project
Manager for the Centre for Infection and Genomics, a joint project between HMU and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary.