Abstract

Abstract Epithelial cells acquire mesenchymal characteristics by undergoing phenotypic and genotypic changes during cancer progression. An early step in the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) is the disruption of intercellular connections due to loss of epithelial cadherins. We find that expression of tumor suppressor hCLCA2 is strongly associated with epithelial differentiation and that induction of EMT by mesenchymal transcription factors represses its expression. Moreover, we report here that knockdown of hCLCA2 by RNA interference results in disruption of cell-cell junctions by downregulating E-cadherin. This also imparts invasiveness and anoikis-resistance to epithelial cells but is insufficient to induce full EMT. However, activation of Ras oncogene in combination with hCLCA2 knockdown is sufficient to induce full EMT in vitro. These findings indicate that, like E-cadherin, hCLCA2 is required for epithelial differentiation and suggest that its loss during tumor progression contributes to metastasis. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2292.

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