Glypican-3 induces a mesenchymal to epithelial transition in human breast cancer cells

LILIAN FEDRA CASTILLO; ROCÍO TASCÓN; MARÍA AMPARO LAGO HUVELLE; GISELA NOVACK; MARÍA CANDELARIA LLORENS DE LOS RÍOS ; ANCELY FERREIRA DOS SANTOS; JORGE SHORTREDE; ANA MARÍA CABANILLAS; ELISA BAL DE KIER JOFFÉ; LETICIA LABRIOLA; MARÍA GISELLE PETERS

Oncotarget

Impact Journals

Año: 2016 vol. 7

reast cancer is the disease with the highest impact on global health, being metastasis the main cause of death. To metastasize, carcinoma cells must reactivate a latent program called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), through which epithelial cancer cells acquire mesenchymal-like traits. Glypican-3 (GPC3), a proteoglycan involved in the regulation of proliferation and survival, has been associated with cancer. In this study we observed that the expression of GPC3 is opposite to the invasive/metastatic ability of Hs578T, MDA-MB231, ZR-75-1 and MCF-7 human breast cancer cell lines. GPC3 silencing activated growth, cell death resistance, migration, and invasive/metastatic capacity of MCF-7 cancer cells, while GPC3 overexpression inhibited these properties in MDA-MB231 tumor cell line. Moreover, silencing of GPC3 deepened the MCF-7 breast cancer cells mesenchymal characteristics, decreasing the expression of the epithelial marker E-Cadherin. On the other side, GPC3 overexpression i