E-cadherin, as a tumor suppressor, plays an important role for intercellular adhesion involved in metastasis. Although K-Ras is highly expressed in a variety of cancers, the regulation of E-cadherin expression by K-Ras in association with DNA methylation and cell metastasis has not been completely clarified. In this study, E-cadherin expression was repressed in 267B1/K-Ras human epithelial pros...

PURPOSE The role of E-cadherin in carcinogenesis is of great interest, but few studies have examined its relevance to pancreatic carcinoma. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We evaluated E-cadherin protein expression by immunohistochemistry in pancreatobiliary cancers having a noncohesive histologic phenotype (21 undifferentiated adenocarcinomas and 7 signet ring carcinomas), comparing the results with pan...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the promoter methylation status of the E-cadherin gene in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and its association with clinical pathological parameters, and to explore the relationship between downregulation of E-cadherin gene expression and the methylation status of its promoter region. METHODS Nested methylation-specific PCR was performed to examine CpG methylation w...

E-cadherin, a calcium-dependent cell-cell adhesion molecule, has an important role in epithelial cell function, maintenance of tissue architecture and cancer suppression. Loss of E-cadherin promotes tumor metastatic dissemination and predicts poor prognosis. The present study investigated the clinicopathological significance of E-cadherin expression in cutaneous, mucosal and uveal melanoma rela...

CtBP is a transcriptional corepressor with tumorigenic potential that targets the promoter of the tumor suppressor gene E-cadherin. Pnn/DRS (Pnn) is a "nuclear speckle"-associated protein involved in mRNA processing as well as transcriptional regulation of E-cadherin via its binding to CtBP. Here, we show that CtBP can recruit Pnn to CtBP-associated complexes, resulting in Pnn-dependent chromat...

The cell-cell adhesion molecule E-cadherin is specifically expressed in epithelia and is involved in the maintenance of the epithelial phenotype. Expression of E-cadherin is downregulated in many poorly differentiated carcinomas, which leads to higher motility and invasiveness of the cells. To examine the mechanisms that regulate tissue-specific expression, we have characterized the promoter of...

Chromobox protein homologue 7 (CBX7) is a chromobox family protein encoding a novel polycomb protein, the expression of which shows a progressive reduction, well related with the malignant grade of the thyroid neoplasias. Indeed, CBX7 protein levels decreased in an increasing percentage of cases going from benign adenomas to papillary, follicular, and anaplastic thyroid carcinomas. To elucidate...

PURPOSE Promoter hypermethylation of E-cadherin plays an important role on gastric cancer development. Whereas E-cadherin methylation was frequently detected in the stomach of Helicobacter pylori-infected individuals, we tested whether eradication of H. pylori alters the methylation status of the noncancerous gastric epithelium. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Endoscopic biopsies were taken from the antr...

The Wnt signaling pathway has regulatory roles in cell proliferation, differentiation, and polarity. Aberrant Wnt pathway regulation can lead to abnormal cell proliferation and cancer, and loss of Wnt7a expression has been demonstrated in lung cancer cell lines. E-cadherin keeps intercellular integrity and prevents metastasis. Therefore, E-cadherin has been known as a prognostic factor in cance...

Recent studies have shown that microRNA (miRNA) regulates gene expression by repressing translation or directing sequence-specific degradation of complementary mRNA. Here, we report new evidence in which miRNA may also function to induce gene expression. By scanning gene promoters in silico for sequences complementary to known miRNAs, we identified a putative miR-373 target site in the promoter...