Abstract
Cancer is a heterogeneous disease, and even tumors with similar clinicopathological characteristics show different biology, behavior, and treatment responses. As a result, there is an urgent need to define new prognostic and predictive markers to make treatment options more personalized. According to the latest findings, nucleobindin-2/nesfatin-1 (NUCB2/NESF-1) is an important factor in cancer development and progression. Nucleobindin-2 is a precursor protein of nesfatin-1. As NUCB2 and nesfatin-1 are colocalized in each tissue, their expression is often analyzed together as NUCB2. The metabolic function of NUCB2/NESF-1 is related to food intake, glucose metabolism, and the regulation of immune, cardiovascular and endocrine systems. Recently, it has been demonstrated that high expression of NUCB2/NESF-1 is associated with poor outcomes and promotes cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in, e.g., breast, colon, prostate, endometrial, thyroid, bladder cancers, or glioblastoma. Interestingly, nesfatin-1 is also considered an inhibitor of the proliferation of human adrenocortical carcinoma and ovarian epithelial carcinoma cells. These conflicting results make NUCB2/NESF-1 an interesting target of study in the context of cancer progression. The present review is the first to describe NUCB2/NESF-1 as a new prognostic and predictive marker in cancers.
Highlights
Nucleobindin 2 (NUCB2) was first described in 1994 in KM3 acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line as a DNA binding/EF-hand/acidic-amino acid-rich protein [1,2]
The results indicated a positive correlation between NUCB2/NESF-1 expression and lymph node metastasis and the TNM
In vitro studies revealed that NUCB2/NESF-1 increases invasion, migration, and proliferation in the colon, bladder, papillary thyroid, endometrial, renal, breast cancer cells, and glioblastoma [41,46,50,58]
Summary
Nucleobindin 2 (NUCB2) was first described in 1994 in KM3 acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line as a DNA binding/EF-hand/acidic-amino acid-rich protein [1,2]. Nucleobindin-2 has characteristic functional domains, such as a signal peptide, a Leu ⁄ Ile rich region, two Ca2+ binding EF-hand domains separated by an acidic amino acid-rich region, and a leucine zipper It may play a role in many cellular processes [18,19]. Despite the increasing knowledge about the expression and regulation of NUCB2/NESF-1, its role in physiology and pathology is still poorly understood. This protein is involved in the regulation of many intracellular processes. The summary below gives evidence that suggests that NUCB2/NESF-1 is a potential new biomarker in different cancer types and introduces it as a new area for cancer research
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