Description
COUP-TFII, a member of the nuclear receptor superfamily plays a critical role in angiogenesis and organogenesis during embryonic development. Our results indicate that COUP-TFII expression is profoundly upregulated in prostate cancer patients and might serves as biomarker for recurrence prediction. Thus we conduct transcriptome comparison of control and COUP-TFII depleted PC3 cells to gain genomic insights on the biological processes that COUP-TFII is involved in prostate cancer cells. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) shows that the most prominent altered pathways in the COUP-TFII depleted cells are related to cell growth; cell cycle progression and DNA damage response. Indeed many growth related genes including E2F1, p21, CDC25A, Cyclin A and Cyclin B are changed in COUP-TFII knockdown cells, suggesting that COUP-TFII might be an important regulator for prostate cancer cell growth. Further functional assays from cells and mice genetic studies confirm the hypothesis that COUP-TFII serve as the major regulator to control prostrate cancer growth. Together, results provide insight into the role of COUP-TFII in prostate tumorigenesis.