Open Access

ARTICLE

SPAG9 promotes prostate cancer growth and metastasis

Chunhua YANG^1,2,3, Ye TIAN^1,2,3

1 Department of Radiotherapy & Oncology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, China 2 Institute of Radiotherapy & Oncology, Soochow University, Suzhou, China 3 Suzhou Key Laboratory for Radiation Oncology, Suzhou, China

* Address correspondence to: Ye Tian,

BIOCELL 2019, 43(3), 207-214. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2019.07258

Abstract

Sperm-associated antigen 9 (SPAG9) expression is increased in prostate tissues of prostate cancer patients. This experimental study aimed to investigate the role of SPAG9 in bone metastasis of prostate cancer. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that SPAG9 staining was positive in 81.67% of 240 cases of prostatic carcinoma but only in 6.67% of 120 cases of benign prostate hyperplasia. Strong PAG9 staining was positively correlated with Gleason score and bone metastasis in 240 prostate cancer patients (p < 0.05), but not with the age or serum prostatespecific antigen level (p > 0.05). PC-3 cells were transfected with shRNA against SPAG9, and CCK-8 assay in triplicate showed that PC-3 cell viability was inhibited by SPAG9 knockdown. In addition, transwell assay in triplicate showed that PC-3 cell invasion was inhibited by SPAG9 knockdown. Furthermore, total 2 × 106 PC-3 cells were injected subcutaneously into the right flank of nude mice which were randomly divided into three groups (N = 8) and treated by intratumoral injection of SPAG9 shRNA, control shRNA or PBS, respectively. SPAG9 shRNA inhibited the growth, invasion and angiogenesis while promoted apoptosis of xenografted PC-3 cells. SPAG9 knockdown led to the upregulation of E-cadherin and the downregulation of MMP2 and vimentin in xenografted tumors. In conclusion, this is the first study to provide evidence that SPAG9 promotes bone metastasis of prostate cancer, and SPAG9 is a promising target to prevent or treat bone metastasis of prostate cancer.

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