Abstract 2695: Osteopontin regulated epithelial-mesenchymal transition via PI3K/AKT signaling pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Our previous studies demonstrated that osteopontin (OPN) plays a crucial role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) metastasis. However, its function in epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) remains obscure. In this study, we reported the critical role of OPN in EMT mediated HCC metastasis. Increased expression of OPN in human HCC predicts poor survival and disease recurrence after surgery. HCC tumors overexpressing OPN were featured by active EMT and motility/invasion of tumor cells both in vitro and in vivo, whereas silencing OPN expression attenuated EMT. OPN overexpression enhanced twist through activation of Akt, a critical EMT regulation of transcription factor. Suppression of the PI3K-AKT-Twist pathway interfered with OPN-mediated EMT and invasion. Consistently, we have observed a significant correlation between OPN expression and twist levels in a cohort of HCC patients, and found that combination of these two parameters is a more powerful predictor of poor prognosis. Conclusions: OPN plays a pivotal role in EMT mediated HCC metastasis and may serve as a novel prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target. Citation Format: Qiongzhu Dong, Xu-Chao Zhu, Chun Dai, Xiao-Fei Zhang, Hu-Liang Jia, Qing-Hai Ye, Lun-Xiu Qin. Osteopontin regulated epithelial-mesenchymal transition via PI3K/AKT signaling pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2695. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-2695