Figure 2
FOXC2 represents a critical convergence factor that is commonly upregulated by multiple EMT inducers in PCa cells, and its expression correlates with recurrent and high Gleason score prostate tumors associated with poor clinical prognosis. (a) Morphology of LNCaP cells after stable overexpression of EMT transcription factors—Zeb1 and Snail. (b) Morphology of DU145 cells after stable knockdown of Zeb1 and Snail (a and b: scale bar, 100 μm). (c and e) qRT–PCR analyses for indicated markers in a and b, respectively. Y-axis represents fold change in HPRT-normalized mRNA expression compared with that of Vector Control cells (n=3; error bars indicate s.e.m.). (d and f) Immunoblotting for various markers in the indicated cell lines. (g) FOXC2 expression levels in recurrent vs non-recurrent clinical PCa data from the GDS4109 GEO database. (h and i) FOXC2 expression levels in prostate tumors of varying Gleason scores—data from GSE17356 (h) and TCGA (i) databases. (j) Quantitation of FOXC2 protein expression in various patient PCa tissues as analyzed by IHC (corresponding images shown in Supplementary Figure S1; BPH, benign prostatic hyperplasia; G7, Gleason 7); PIN, prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia. *P<0.05.
