Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 14, 2016; 22(38): 8528-8539
Published online Oct 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i38.8528
Special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 2 acts as a negative regulator of stemness in colorectal cancer cells
Ying Li, Yu-Hong Liu, Yu-Ying Hu, Lin Chen, Jian-Ming Li
Ying Li, Yu-Ying Hu, Lin Chen, Jian-Ming Li, Department of Pathology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, Guangdong Province, China
Yu-Hong Liu, Department of Pathology, Baoan Hospital, Southern Medical University, Shenzhen 518101, Guangdong Province, China
Jian-Ming Li, Department of Pathology, Soochow University Medical School, Suzhou 215123, Jiangsu Province, China
Author contributions: Li Y and Liu YH contributed equally to this work; Li Y, Liu YH and Li JM contributed to study concept and design; Li Y, Hu YY and Chen L contributed to data acquisition; Li Y, Hu YY and Li JM contributed to statistical analysis; Li Y and Li JM contributed to data analysis and interpretation; Li Y and Li JM contributed to drafting of the manuscript for important intellectual content; Liu YH contributed to technical or material support; Li JM contributed to obtaining funding; and Li JM contributed to study supervision.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81525020, No. 81502033, No. 81272300 and No. 31570753.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, China.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at lixinyue@fimmu.com. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Jian-Ming Li, MD, PhD, DSc, Professor, Chief, Department of Pathology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, No. 1838 Guangzhou Road North, Guangzhou 510515, Guangdong Province, China. lixinyue@fimmu.com
Telephone: +86-512-65882673
Received: May 19, 2016
Peer-review started: May 20, 2016
First decision: July 12, 2016
Revised: July 29, 2016
Accepted: August 19, 2016
Article in press: August 19, 2016
Published online: October 14, 2016
Processing time: 145 Days and 22.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: We found that special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 2 (SATB2) had a suppressive effect on the tumor growth, adhesion and migration in vitro. Moreover, SATB2 could negatively regulate the stemness of colorectal cancer (CRC) cells by directly binding to the regulatory elements in the genetic loci of several stem cell markers. Our study provides a new mechanism for the involvement of SATB2 in CRC progression and helps us to better understand the metastasis traits of cancer stem cells.