Bone morphogenetic protein 7 (BMP7), a member of the BMP family of signaling molecules, has been implicated in various types of cancer, particularly prostate cancer and breast cancer.
Thus, our data suggest that BMP7 induces breast cancer cell aging by a mechanism involving BMPRII receptor- and Smad3-mediated repression of the hTERT gene.
Here, we detected significantly lower levels of BMP7 and significantly higher levels of microRNA-137 (miR-137) in the BC specimens, relative to paired adjacent non-tumor breast tissue.
Thus, our data suggest that BMP7 induces breast cancer cell aging and death by a mechanism involving inhibition of telomerase activity and telomere maintenance via BMPRII receptor- and Smad3-mediated repression of the hTERT gene.
Moreover, BMP7 decreased the expression of vimentin, a mesenchymal marker associated with invasiveness and poor prognosis, in human MDA-MB-231 (MDA-231)-B/Luc(+) breast cancer cells under basal and transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta)-stimulated conditions.
One of the genes common to both data sets was bone morphogenic protein 7 (BMP7), whose expression is also significantly correlated with LMO4 transcript levels in a large dataset of human breast cancers, suggesting that BMP7 is a bona fide target gene of LMO4 in breast cancer.