Attenuation of EGFL7 inhibits human laryngocarcinoma cells growth and invasion.

AIM To investigate its effect on the proliferation and invasion of laryngeal carcinoma and understand the potential underlying mechanisms to provide new targets for the diagnosis and treatment of recurrent laryngeal cancer metastasis. METHODS We constructed a lentiviral vector expressing EGFL7 specific shRNA, and introduced it in EGFL7 functions were attenuated by a lentiviral vector harboring shRNA targeting at EGFL7 in laryngeal carcinoma cell line Hep-2. Prolifereation and invasion assays were carried out in vitro. And in vivo tumor burden assay was done in nude mice. RESULTS The expression of EGFL7 was knocked-down by 80% in hep-2 cells transfected by the lentiviral EGFL7 shRNA vector and EGFL7 gene expression was detected by realtime PCR and Western blotting analysis respectively. The flow cytometric analysis showed that arrested the cell cycle in G1 phase, In tumor burden assay, to parental And vector control cells, the survival rates Of nude mice in EGFL7 shRNA group dropped down from the first day after implantation as indicated by MTT assay (P < 0.05). The formation and growth rate of xenograft tumor in mice transfected with siRNA against Bmi-1 slowed down significantly. CONCLUSION Attenuation of EGFL7 function significantly suppresses tumor growth and induces apoptosis, both in vitro and in vivo. EGFL7 may be play a key role in invasion and metastasis of Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), thus would to be a new target for gene therapy in LSCC.