Gastric cancer is the second most common cancer and a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. The KLF6 tumour suppressor gene has been previously shown to be inactivated in a number of human cancers through loss of heterozygosity (LOH), somatic mutation, decreased expression, and increased alternative splicing into a dominant negative oncogenic splice variant, KLF6-SV1. In this present study, thirty seven gastric cancer samples were analysed for the presence of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) of the KLF6 locus and somatic mutation. In total, 18 of 34 (53%) of the gastric cancer samples analysed demonstrated KLF6 locus specific loss. Four missense mutations, T179I, R198G, R71Q, and S180L were detected. Interestingly, two of these mutations R71Q and S180L have been identified independently by several groups in various malignancies including prostate, colorectal and gastric cancer. In addition, decreased wtKLF6 expression was associated with loss of the KLF6 locus and was present in 48% of primary gastric tumour samples analysed. Functional studies confirmed that wtKLF6 suppressed proliferation of gastric cancer cells via transcriptional regulation of the cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor p21 and the oncogene c-myc. Functional characterization of the common tumour-derived mutants demonstrated that the mutant proteins fail to suppress proliferation and function as dominant negative regulators of wtKLF6 function. Furthermore, stable overexpression of the R71Q and S180L tumour derived mutants in the gastric cancer cell line, Hs746T resulted in increased tumourigenicity in vivo. Combined, these findings suggest an important role for the KLF6 tumour suppressor gene in gastric cancer development and progression and identify several highly cancer-relevant signaling pathways regulated by the KLF6 tumour suppressor gene.

Estrogen plays an essential role in type I endometrial cancer cell proliferation. Despite great progresses in the etiology has been obtained in the past, however, the molecular mechanisms remain to be fully clarified. Prohibitin has been demonstrated involvement in multiple cancers' development. If it also contributes to estrogen-driven endometrial cancer proliferation is not clear. IHC assay result display that prohibitin overexpressed in endometrial cancer tissue and associated with the poor prognosis; Western blot assay detect that upregulated prohibitin expression with dose- and time-dependent manners. The cellular growth was monitored with SRB assay which demonstrate that knockdown prohibitin attenuated estrogen-induced proliferation. Ubiquitination assay finds estrogen increased prohibitin level through stabilizing prohibitin protein via inhibition of ubiquitination, while estrogen-induced protein expression was mediated by estrogen receptor. Our findings provide a new insight on the mechanism of estrogen-induced proliferation, implying the possibility of using prohibitin as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of endometrial cancer.