Bioinformatic analyses were utilized to define the expression of MYC-regulated genes in human colon cancer and metabolomics analyses were used to identify pathways regulated by LEF1 in MYC expressing cells.
The expressions of C-MYC and BCL-2 in colon cancer tissues exhibited high levels of expression, while miR-184 displayed relatively low levels in comparison to the adjacent normal tissues.
Among the analyzed genes, 10.5% (42) had no reported link with colon cancer, including the SFRP1, IGF1 and ADH1B (down), and MYC and IL8 (up), whose encoded proteins were most interacting with other proteins from the same or even distinct networks.
Besides, an heterogeneous pattern of ARNTL, WEE and c-MYC expression hallmarked the chosen colon cancer cell lines and likely influenced their phenotypic changes.
c-MYC overexpression is frequently observed in various cancers including colon cancer and regulates many biological activities such as aberrant cell proliferation, apoptosis, genomic instability, immortalization and drug resistance.
We investigated here two 8q24 breast and colon cancer risk alleles in the close vicinity of the MYC gene for their role in the occurrence of distant metastases.
In this study, we confirm the association for several single nucleotide polymorphisms at 8q24 in colon cancer but have not detected any structural role relating to c-MYC amplification or chromosomal fragility.
We investigated the effects of RNA interference-mediated silencing of the c-myc gene on celluar proliferation and apoptosis in human colon cancer HT-29 cells in vitro and in vivo.
We performed dual (two-color) fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) by using direct fluorescent labeling probes for C-MYC and chromosome 8 in six gastrointestinal (three stomach and three colon) cancers.
Although the c-myc gene is overexpressed in approximately 70% of human colonic cancers, previous studies have not detected frequent gene amplification or rearrangement of c-myc in these tumors, although such amplification has been reported in chemically induced rodent colon cancer and quantitative analysis of gene copy number has shown the gene to be amplified at a low level in mucinous and poorly differentiated human colon carcinomas.
More recently, an amplified c-myc gene has been positioned on a chromosomal homogeneous staining region (HSR) in a human colon cancer cell line, COLO 320, with neuroendocrine properties.