Isolation and characterization of human breast cancer cells with SOX2 promoter activity

•SOX2 promoter activities consist with SOX2 mRNA expression in breast cancers.•SOX2 promoter positive cells have high SOX2 protein and sphere formation activity.•SOX2 promoter positive cells have unique stemness-related mRNA profile. Sex determining region Y-box 2 (SOX2) is well known as one of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biochemical and biophysical research communications 2013-07, Vol.437 (2), p.205-211
Main Authors: Liang, Shanshan, Furuhashi, Masako, Nakane, Rie, Nakazawa, Seitaro, Goudarzi, Houman, Hamada, Jun-ichi, Iizasa, Hisashi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Base Sequence
Breast Neoplasms - genetics
Breast Neoplasms - pathology
Cancer stem cells
DNA Primers
Female
Humans
MCF-7 Cells
Promoter Regions, Genetic
RNA, Messenger - genetics
SOX2 promoter
SOXB1 Transcription Factors - genetics
Stemness
Transcription factor reporter
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Summary:•SOX2 promoter activities consist with SOX2 mRNA expression in breast cancers.•SOX2 promoter positive cells have high SOX2 protein and sphere formation activity.•SOX2 promoter positive cells have unique stemness-related mRNA profile. Sex determining region Y-box 2 (SOX2) is well known as one of the “stemness” factors and is often expressed in cancers including breast cancer. In this study, we developed a reporter system using fluorescent protein driven by the promoter for SOX2 gene to detect and isolate living SOX2-positive cells. Using this system, we determined that SOX2 promoter activities were well correlated with SOX2 mRNA expression levels in 5 breast cancer cell lines, and that the cell population with positive SOX2 promoter activity (pSp-T+) isolated from one of the 5 cell lines, MCF-7 cells, showed a high SOX2 protein expression and high sphere-forming activity compared with very low promoter activity (pSp-Tlow/−). The pSp-T+ population expressed higher mRNA levels of several stemness-related genes such as CD44, ABCB1, NANOG and TWIST1 than the pSp-Tlow/− population whereas the two populations expressed CD24 at similar levels. These results suggest that the cell population with SOX2 promoter activity contains cancer stem cell (CSC)-like cells which show different expression profiles from those of CSC-marker genes previously recognized in human breast cancers.
ISSN:0006-291X
1090-2104
DOI:10.1016/j.bbrc.2013.06.038