We recently reported intracellular NPNT as a potential prognostic marker in breast cancer and that NPNT promotes metastasis in an integrin-dependent manner.
We found that lung and liver tissue of control animals (not-injected with tumor cells) expressed nephronectin which was lost in animals bearing metastatic tumor for 25 days.
Altered expression of NPNT has been linked with the progression of certain types of cancers, such as spontaneous breast tumor metastasis and malignant melanoma.
Nephronectin (NPNT) is an extracellular matrix protein which has shown biological activities in breast cancer metastases and osteoblasts differentiation.