Prrx1 promotes stemness and angiogenesis via activating TGF-β/smad pathway and upregulating proangiogenic factors in glioma

• Main Authors: Zetao Chen, Yihong Chen, Yan Li, Weidong Lian, Kehong Zheng, Yuxuan Zhang, Yujie Zhang, Chuang Lin, Chaoqun Liu, Fei Sun, Xinlin Sun, Jihui Wang, Liang Zhao, Yiquan Ke
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2021-06-01
• Series: Cell Death and Disease
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41419-021-03882-7

Abstract Glioma is one of the most lethal cancers with highly vascularized networks and growing evidences have identified glioma stem cells (GSCs) to account for excessive angiogenesis in glioma. Aberrant expression of paired-related homeobox1 (Prrx1) has been functionally associated with cancer stem cells including GSCs. In this study, Prrx1 was found to be markedly upregulated in glioma specimens and elevated Prrx1 expression was inversely correlated with prognosis of glioma patients. Prrx1 potentiated stemness acquisition in non-stem tumor cells (NSTCs) and stemness maintenance in GSCs, accompanied with increased expression of stemness markers such as SOX2. Prrx1 also promoted glioma angiogenesis by upregulating proangiogenic factors such as VEGF. Consistently, silencing Prrx1 markedly inhibited glioma proliferation, stemness, and angiogenesis in vivo. Using a combination of subcellular proteomics and in vitro analyses, we revealed that Prrx1 directly bound to the promoter regions of TGF-β1 gene, upregulated TGF-β1 expression, and ultimately activated the TGF-β/smad pathway. Silencing TGF-β1 mitigated the malignant behaviors induced by Prrx1. Activation of this pathway cooperates with Prrx1 to upregulate the expression of stemness-related genes and proangiogenic factors. In summary, our findings revealed that Prrx1/TGF-β/smad signal axis exerted a critical role in glioma stemness and angiogeneis. Disrupting the function of this signal axis might represent a new therapeutic strategy in glioma patients.