Page 52 - D. Cancer biology

[D. Cancer biology-39]

SPON2 Enhanced By Notch Signaling Marks Aggressive

Tumor Growth in Gastric Cancer

Hyeon-Gu Kang¹˙², Jun-Ho Jang¹˙², Seok-Jun Kim¹˙²

¹Department of Biomedical Science, Chosun University, Gwangju 61452, Republic of Korea, ²Brain Korea 21 Plus

Research Team for Bioactive Control Technology, Chosun University, Gwangju 61452, Republic of Korea

SPON2 is involved in cancer progression and metastasis of many tumors; however, its role and underlying
mechanism in gastric cancer are still obscure. In this study, we investigated the role of SPON2 and related signaling

pathway in gastric cancer progression and metastasis. SPON2 expression levels were found to be upregulated in

gastric cancer cell lines and patient tissues than in normal gastric epithelial cells and normal controls. Furthermore,
SPON2 silencing was observed to decrease cell proliferation and motility, and reduce tumor growth. Conversely,
SPON2 overexpression was found to increase cell proliferation and motility. Subsequently, we focused on regulatory

mechanism of SPON2 in gastric cancer. We examined whether Notch signaling-related transcription factor binds to
SPON2 promoter region, and confirmed the significance through reporter gene assay. Additionally, activation of

Notch signaling was observed to increase cell proliferation, migration, and invasion through SPON2 expression. Our
study demonstrated that Notch signaling-mediated SPON2 upregulation is associated with aggressive progression

of gastric cancer. In conclusion, we suggest that upregulated SPON2 via Notch signaling as potential target gene
to inhibit gastric cancer progression.