SOX1 functions as a tumor suppressor through antagonizing WNT/beta-catenin signaling pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma

[[abstract]]Oncogenic activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway is common in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Aberrant hypermethylation of tumor suppressor genes in their promoter regions is frequently found in human cancers. Our previous works have demonstrated that SOX1 gene was hypermethylated in HCCs as well as cervical and ovarian cancers. A growing number of papers suggest that SOX family proteins, such as SOX9, SOX17, SOX4 and SOX2, serve as either tumor suppressors or oncoproteins through manipulating Wnt signaling pathway in different types of cancer. However the molecular mechanism is not well understood.In this study, we established an inducible system to overexpress SOX1 in HCC cell lines and checked whether SOX1 have tumor suppressor function in vitro and in vivo. We found that overexpression of SOX1 could inhibit cell proliferation and colony formation in HCC cells and suppress tumor growth in xenograft mice. Next we used GST pull-down, co-immunoprecipitation (co-IP), immunocytochemistry and luciferase reporter assay to study whether SOX1 could interact with β-catenin to regulate Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Our data showed that SOX1 is physically associated with β-catenin/ TCF complex and could inhibit the TCF-dependent transcriptional activity. Furthermore, SOX1 was co-localized with β-catenin in nucleus by confocal microscopy. These results suggest that SOX1 functions as a tumor suppressor through interfering Wnt/β-catenin signaling in HCC