This is the case with Fibulin-5, which has been shown to display both tumor-promoting and tumor-protective functions by mechanisms that are not totally defined.
Moreover, 4T1 cells, a mouse breast cancer cell line model, shows an increased capacity to generate tumors when exogenously expresses fibulin-5 with a RGD-to-RGE change, and such capacity is similar to that shown for 4T1 cells with an interfered Fbln5 gene.
Low expression of Fibulin-5 was significantly correlated with poor prognostic features including multiple tumor nodes, venous infiltration, high Edmondson-Steiner grading and advanced tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) tumor stage.
Furthermore, knockdown of β-catenin suppresses metastasis of H460 tumors, while knockdown of GSK3β promotes metastasis of fibulin-5-expressing H1752 tumors.
Compared with 1.16 ± 0.28 in the normal control, the mean ± SD expression of fibulin-5 in low grade tumors and high grade tumors were 0.57 ± 0.32 and 0.44 ± 0.42 (P = 0.002 and P = 0.018, respectively), while the expression in Ta-T1 tumors and T2+ tumors were 0.55 ± 0.31 and 0.49 ± 0.43 (P = 0.002 and P = 0.015, respectively).