Increased expression of NOX4 protein is associated with cancer progression and metastasis but the role of NOX4 in cell proliferation and invasion is not fully understood.
Our studies provide new insight into TGFβ/SMAD3 and mut-p53-mediated NOX4 induction involving epigenetic control of NOX4 in tumor cell migration, suggesting NOX4 is a potential therapeutic target to combat tumor progression and metastasis.
Gene-neighbour and gene set enrichment analyses revealed that NOX1/2/5 were strongly correlated with genes associated with cancer cell survival and metastasis, whereas increased NOX4 and DUOX1 expression was associated with genes that inhibit tumour progression.
Our previous studies have confirmed that NADPH oxidase 4 (NOX4) is abundantly expressed in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and contributes to cancer progression.
We have previously shown that in glioblastoma, NADPH oxidase subunit 4 (Nox4) is a critical mediator involved in cycling hypoxia-mediated ROS production and tumor progression.
Increased NOX4-p22(phox) in cancer might be related to a higher proliferation rate and tumor progression but a role in the development of tumors has to be further studied and established in the future.