UTP23 Functions in Breast Cancer Progression and Predicts Poor Prognosis of Luminal a Breast Cancer.

BACKGROUND: Luminal A breast cancer is the most common molecular subtype of breast cancer. Exploring biomarkers to identify luminal A breast cancer patients at high risk of recurrence and metastasis has important clinical significance. UTP23 is a component of ribosomal small-subunit processome, which is involved in ribosome synthesis and RNA maturation. The role of UTP23 in breast cancer has not been reported. METHODS: TCGA-BRCA data, LinkedOmics, STRING, Metascape and ssGSEA were used to analyze UTP23 expression in breast cancer and evaluate prognosis. Quantitative real-time PCR, western blot and in vitro cell experiment were used to demonstrate the role of UTP23 in breast cancer. RESULTS: UTP23 showed abnormally high expression in multiple cancers and was associated with poor prognosis. UTP23 was associated with T stage, lymph node metastasis, race, histological type, molecular subtypes and survival status in breast cancer. Importantly, UTP23 was significantly associated with poor OS in luminal A or early breast cancer, not in non-luminal A or advanced breast cancer. UTP23 expression was significantly correlated with immune cells infiltration. Enrichment analysis suggested that UTP23 might regulate cell cycle and cell division. Bioinformatics analysis showed DCAF13 might be downstream factor of UTP23. UTP23 expression promoted MCF-7 cells proliferation, migration and invasion possibly through regulating DCAF13 expression. CONCLUSIONS: UTP23 may function in breast cancer progression. The elevated UTP23 may be a potential prognostic biomarker for luminal A or early breast cancer.

Down-regulation of UTP23 promotes paclitaxel resistance and predicts poorer prognosis in ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVE: Frequent resistance to paclitaxel and carboplatin based chemotherapy remains a therapeutic challenge in ovarian cancer. UTP23, a small sub-unit processome component, is down-regulated in a paclitaxel-resistant cell line SKOV3-TR30 compared with its parental SKOV3 cells based on our previous study. However, the specific mechanism of UTP23 in regulating ovarian cancer chemotherapy resistance remains largely unknown. METHODS: Immunohistochemical (IHC) staining was used to measure UTP23 expression in 133 ovarian cancer tissues. Then we used short hairpin RNA (shRNA), over-expression plasmid and cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay to evaluate the function of UTP23 on modulating paclitaxel resistance in ovarian cancer. RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) was used to find targeted downstream molecular of UTP23. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and western blotting were utilized to detect related genes expression. RESULTS: We confirmed that UTP23 was down-regulated in both SKOV3-TR30 and A2780-TR cells compared with their parental cells. Decreased UTP23 expression was observed in ovarian cancer tissues with paclitaxel resistance. Moreover, lower expression of UTP23 was tightly correlated with patients of worse prognosis. Further UTP23 silence by shRNA increased paclitaxel resistance in SKOV3 and A2780 cells. And UTP23 over-expression by plasmid decreased paclitaxel resistance in SKOV3-TR30 and A2780-TR cells. Additionally, RNA-seq and qRT-PCR validation revealed that growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) was probably a downstream target for UTP23. GDF15 was notably up-regulated upon the depletion of UTP23 in both SKOV3 and A2780 cells. CONCLUSION: Our findings elucidated a previously unknown function for UTP23 in regulating paclitaxel sensitivity and UTP23 could serve as a potential prognostic predictor for ovarian cancer.

TXNDC17 promotes paclitaxel resistance via inducing autophagy in ovarian cancer.

Paclitaxel is recommended as a first-line chemotherapeutic agent against ovarian cancer, but drug resistance becomes a major limitation of its success clinically. The key molecule or mechanism associated with paclitaxel resistance in ovarian cancer still remains unclear. Here, we showed that TXNDC17 screened from 356 differentially expressed proteins by LC-MS/MS label-free quantitative proteomics was more highly expressed in paclitaxel-resistant ovarian cancer cells and tissues, and the high expression of TXNDC17 was associated with poorer prognostic factors and exhibited shortened survival in 157 ovarian cancer patients. Moreover, paclitaxel exposure induced upregulation of TXNDC17 and BECN1 expression, increase of autophagosome formation, and autophagic flux that conferred cytoprotection for ovarian cancer cells from paclitaxel. TXNDC17 inhibition by siRNA or enforced overexpression by a pcDNA3.1(+)-TXNDC17 plasmid correspondingly decreased or increased the autophagy response and paclitaxel resistance. Additionally, the downregulation of BECN1 by siRNA attenuated the activation of autophagy and cytoprotection from paclitaxel induced by TXNDC17 overexpression in ovarian cancer cells. Thus, our findings suggest that TXNDC17, through participation of BECN1, induces autophagy and consequently results in paclitaxel resistance in ovarian cancer. TXNDC17 may be a potential predictor or target in ovarian cancer therapeutics.