The transcription factor ST18 regulates proapoptotic and proinflammatory gene expression in fibroblasts.

Suppression of tumorigenicity 18 (ST18) and the homologues neural zinc-finger protein-3 (NZF3) and myelin transcription factor 3 (Myt3) are transcription factors with unknown function. Previous studies have established that they repress transcription of a synthetic reporter construct consisting of the consensus sequence AAAGTTT linked to the thymidine kinase promoter. In addition, ST18 exhibits significantly reduced expression in breast cancer and breast cancer cell lines. We report here for the first time evidence that ST18 mediates tumor necrosis factor (TNF) -alpha induced mRNA levels of proapoptotic and proinflammatory genes in fibroblasts by mRNA profiling and silencing with ST18 small interfering RNA (siRNA). Gene set enrichment analysis and mRNA profiling support this conclusion by identifying several apoptotic and inflammatory pathways that are down-regulated by ST18 siRNA. In addition, ST18 siRNA reduces TNF-induced fibroblast apoptosis and caspase-3/7 activity. Fibroblasts that overexpress ST18 by transient transfection exhibit significantly increased apoptosis and increased expression of TNF-alpha, interleukin (IL) -1alpha, and IL-6. In addition, cotransfection of ST18 and a TNF-alpha or IL-1alpha reporter construct demonstrates that ST18 overexpression in fibroblasts significantly enhanced promoter activity of these genes. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that the transcription factor ST18/NZF3 regulates the mRNA levels of proapoptotic and proinflammatory genes in revealing a previously unrecognized function.