Abstract
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths and a major health problem. High mobility group box 3 (HMGB3), a member of the high-mobility group box (HMGB) family, was reported to be over-expressed in gastric carcinoma and bladder cancer. However, the function of HMGB3 in CRC remains unclear. Here, we found that HMGB3 was up-regulated in CRC at both mRNA and protein levels. qRT-PCR results showed that high expression of HMGB3 had positive correlation with serosal invasion, lymph metastasis, and tumor–node–metastasis (TNM) stage in CRC patient. Functional experiments showed that HMGB3 can promote CRC cells proliferation and migration in vitro. Moreover, we found HMGB3 can active WNT/β-catenin pathway to increase the expression level of c-Myc and MMP7. These results may be the reason for HMGB3 oncogene role in CRC. In summary, our data indicated that HMGB3 may serve as an oncoprotein and could be used as a potential prognostic marker in CRC.
Highlights
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common malignant tumor in the digestive system [1]
High mobility group box 3 (HMGB3) expression was normalized to GAPDH and the results were presented as the fold-change in tumor tissues relative to the matched adjacent normal tissues
Little is known about the function of HMGB3 expression in CRC
Summary
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common malignant tumor in the digestive system [1]. The incidence of CRC is increasing year by year. 1.2 million patients worldwide are diagnosed with CRC each year, and more than 600 thousand patients died directly or indirectly of CRC [2,3,4]. Signs of CRC are not obvious, symptoms often appear late and prone to metastasis, the prognosis is poor [5]. This is the main reason for the high mortality rate.
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