Aberrantly overexpressed lung cancer stem cell associated factor-X (LCSCAFX) has been implicated in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) development.
To explore the effect of LCSCAFXon the lung cancer stem-like traitsin vitro and in vivo.
We reported that enforced expression of LCSCAFX promoted NSCLC cells invasion and metastasis, drug resistance and recurrencein vitro and in vivo, whereas depletion of LCSCAFX suppressed metastasis and relapse in NSCLC. Moreover, we found that LCSCAFX expression was elevated in lung cancer stem cells (LCSCs). Indeed, knockdown of LCSCAFX impaired lung cancer stem-like traits. Conversely, ectopic overexpression of LCSCAFX enhanced the self-renewal ability of lung cancer cells in vitro. In addition, elevated LCSCAFX robustly enhanced tumor initiating frequencies, as well as growth rates of NSCLC cells derived tumor xenografts in immunodeficient mice. Furthermore, mechanistic investigations established that LCSCAFX stabilized c-Myc protein by suppressing its ubiquitylation and proteasomal degradation, which is required for lung cancer stem-like properties maintenance. Consistently, immunohistochemical analysis of clinical lung tumor tissues showed that LCSCAFX was elevated in NSCLC tissues and high LCSCAFX expression serve as an independent prognostic marker in patients with NSCLC. Importantly, genetic depletion of LCSCAFX combined chemotherapy dramatically inhibited NSCLC progression in patient-derived xenograft (PDX) model.
These findings demonstrated a previously unappreciated role of LCSCAFX in the regulation of LCSCs, assigning LCSCAFX as a promising therapeutic target for lung cancer treatments.
The authors.
Has not received any funding.
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.