Gene expression profiles of two lung squamous cell carcinoma cell lines treated with SOX2 siRNA. Homo sapiens

SOX2 is a transcription factor essential for self-renewal and pluripotency of embryonic stem cells. Recently SOX2 was found overexpressed in the majority of the lung squamous cell carcinoma (SQC), in which it acts as a lineage-survival oncogene. However, downstream targets/pathways of SOX2 in lung SQC cells remain to be identified. In order to identify genes/pathways likely to be downstream of SOX2, we conducted SOX2 silencing experiments in LK2 and NCI-H520 (H520 thereafter), two SOX2-abundant lung SQC cell lines and analyzed global gene transcription changes by gene expression microarray assay. Overall design: Each of H520 and LK2 cell lines was treated with either pooled siRNAs of SOX2 or non-silencing (control) siRNAs. After 48 h, cells were harvested and totoal RNA extracted for gene expression microarray analysis using Illumina HumanHT12 v3 BeadChip.