Recently, Professor Zhi-xiong Jim Xiao and team from the SCU School of Life Sciences published in PNAS a research paper entitled " Transcriptional Suppression of AMPKa1 Promotes Breast Cancer Metastasis upon Oncogene Activation”, which for the first time revealed that transcriptional inhibition of AMPK plays a key regulatory role in PI3K / HER2 driven breast cancer metastasis. On April 27, 2020, Dr. kristiina Vuori, director of the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, CA, strongly recommended and wrote a comment for the paper. It was listed as a Faculty Opinions Recommendation in Faculty Operations (formerly F1000Prime).
“Oncogenic hotspot mutations in PIK3CA and overexpression of HER2 are known as a driving force for human breast cancer metastasis. AMPK is pivotal in maintaining cellular energy homeostasis. In this study, we demonstrate that transcription inhibition of AMPKα1 is critically important in human advanced breast cancer with poor clinical outcomes, that AMPKα1 is transcriptionally inhibited in response to activation of PI3K/HER2, and that ΔNp63α, a tumor metastasis suppressor, is a direct transcriptional factor mediating oncogenic PI3K/HER2-induced transcriptional suppression of AMPKα1. In addition, inhibition of AMPK leads to disruption of cell–cell adhesion and promotes cancer metastasis. This study highlights a critical role for AMPK in the connection of cell–cell adhesion and cancer metastasis.” (Significance)
The first author of this paper is Dr. Yong Yi, associate research fellow of the College of Life Sciences and State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, Sichuan University, and Professor Zhi-xiong Jim Xiao is the corresponding author. Other research participants include Dr. Mengmeng Liu and Dr. Hu Chen of the SCU College of Life Sciences. The research project was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation and China Basic Research and Development Fund for Universities.
Faculty Opinions (formerly F1000 Prime, renamed as Faculty Opinions on April 12, 2020) is an important academic paper evaluation institution in the field of biomedicine, which is composed ofover 8,000 leading experts from across the life sciences, health and physical sciences. The experts recommend articles they consider to be highly important to others working both in their field and beyond .
Article link：https://www.pnas.org/content/117/14/8013
Faculty Opinions: https://facultyopinions.com/prime/737595225
