Runx1 participation in epithelial mesenchymal transition in breast cancer

SOFÍA MARÍA SOSA; MARÍA SOL RECOUVREUX; LUCIANA ROCHA-VIEGAS; PABLO NICOLÁS ECHEVERRÍA; NATALIA RUBINSTEIN

Mar del Plata

Congreso; LXI Reunión Científica Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica (SAIC); 2016

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a heterogeneous group of diseases with a well-known association with epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT is a process implicated in the early stages of the metastatic cascade, and involves the cellular conversion to a more invasive (mesenchymal) cell type. Recent results from our group show that the transcription factor Runx1 is able to up regulate the expression of RSPO3 (oncogene) and down regulate GJA1 (tumor suppressor gene) on breast tumor cell lines in a Foxp3-depending fashion. Others and we showed that Runx1 is necessary for epithelial mammary tumor cell migration and invasion. Furthermore, it was found that RUNX1 protein expression correlates with poor prognosis in TNBC. Runx1 was first described as a hematopoietic TF involved in human leukemia; however, growing research evidences demonstrate that there is an incomplete understanding of its transcriptional activity in breast cancer. The aim of this study was to determine if Runx1 is expressed and active during EMT. Using a gene expression profile database obtained by TGFb-EMT induction model on epithelial cell line, we found that mesenchymal cells express significantly higher levels of Runx1 mRNA, these data was validated by qPCR on NMuMG (p