SOX4 regulates invasion of bladder cancer cells via repression of WNT5a.

Sry‑Related HMG‑BOX‑4 (SOX4) is a developmental transcription factor that is overexpressed in as many as 23% of bladder cancer patients; however, the role of SOX4 in bladder cancer tumorigenesis is not yet well understood. Given the many roles of SOX4 in embryonic development and the context‑dependent regulation of gene expression, in this study, we sought to determine the role of SOX4 in bladder cancer and to identify SOX4‑regulated genes that may contribute to tumorigenesis. For this purpose, we employed a CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) method to transcriptionally repress SOX4 expression in T24 bladder cancer cell lines, 'rescued' these cell lines with the lentiviral‑mediated expression of SOX4, and performed whole genome expression profiling.

MEDICI: Mining Essentiality Data to Identify Critical Interactions for Cancer Drug Target Discovery and Development.

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) mediate the transmission and regulation of oncogenic signals that are essential to cellular proliferation and survival, and thus represent potential targets for anti-cancer therapeutic discovery. Despite their significance, there is no method to experimentally disrupt and interrogate the essentiality of individual endogenous PPIs. The ability to computationally predict or infer PPI essentiality would help prioritize PPIs for drug discovery and help advance understanding of cancer biology.