Introduction: Previous studies have indicated that the small leucine-rich proteoglycan (SLR) osteoglycin (OGN) is downregulated in various cancers, including squamous cervical carcinoma, gastric cancer, and colorectal adenoma, indicating that OGN is a putative tumor suppressor. However, its exact role in the pathology of human cancers, especially breast cancer (BC), is not clear.
Methods: The expression of OGN in BC tissues was examined using qRT-PCR. Online databases were employed to analyze the correlation between OGN expression and clinicopathological characteristics. CCK-8 assay, colony formation assay, transwell migration and invasion assays were applied to detect cell proliferation, colony formation, migration and invasion of BC cells, respectively. Xenograft tumor models were constructed to explore the role of OGN on tumor growth in vivo.
Results: OGN expression was reduced in 24 paired BC samples compared with normal tissue. Decreased expression of OGN was correlated with greater pathological grade, a more aggressive tumor subtype, and poor overall survival. In vitro experiments showed that OGN overexpressed by plasmid transfection significantly inhibited cell proliferation, colony formation, migration, and invasion of BC cell lines. In xenograft tumor models, overexpression of OGN repressed the growth of MCF-7 cells in vivo and alleviated the compression of the tumor on surrounding structures. We also observed that OGN expression reversed EMT via repressing the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway.
Conclusion: This study revealed that OGN could function as a tumor suppressor during breast carcinogenesis, and we contribute new evidence to the body of research on the SLRP family.
Keywords: breast cancer, osteoglycin, small leucine-rich proteoglycans, epithelial to mesenchymal transition, PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway