Diverse effect of WWOX overexpression in SW480 colon cancer cell line.. Homo sapiens

The WWOX gene is a tumor suppressor probably involved in regulation of cell cycle and apoptosis and downregulated in variety of cancer types.However, its role in colon cancerogenesis is unknown. The aim of this study was to characterize how WWOX may be involved in colon cancerogenesis or cancer progression, how it influences the basic cancer cell features and modifies cell expression profile.Our observations suggest that in HT29 colon cancer cell line increased expression of WWOX may result in transition of cancer cells into more normal- like colon epithelium phenotype, on the other hand in SW480 WWOX revealed the well-known tumour suppressor properties. However, as the colon cancer is very heterogeneous disease, obtained discrepancies may reflect the known differences between cell lines and cancerogenesis pathway, which they undergone. Overall design: SW480 colon cancer cells were stably transfected with WWOX cDNA. SW480 cells transfected with an empty vector served as a control. Total mRNA was isolated to look for gene-expression differences induced by the WWOX overexpression.