UNR/ Expression Is Critical to Maintain Invasive Phenotype of Colorectal Cancer through Regulation of c-MYC and Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition.

(cold shock domain containing E1) gene is located upstream of the locus, and codes for an RNA-binding protein named Upstream of N-Ras (UNR). In cancer, has been shown to regulate c-Fos, c-Myc, Pten, Rac1, or Vimentin. UNR/ has been studied in breast, melanoma, pancreatic and prostate cancer. Then, the aim of this study is to evaluate the role of /UNR in colorectal cancer progression and maintenance of aggressive phenotype. We firstly evaluated UNR/ expression in human colon cancer derived cell lines and patient samples. Subsequently, we performed functional experiments by UNR/ downregulation. We also evaluated UNR/ prognostic relevance in two independent sets of patients. Not only was UNR/ expression higher in tumor samples compared to untransformed samples, but also in colonospheres and metastatic origin cell lines than their parental and primary cell lines, respectively. Downregulation of UNR/ reduced cell viability and migration throughout a restrain of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and increases sensitivity to apoptosis. Interestingly, high UNR/ expression was associated with poor prognosis and correlated positively with c-MYC expression in colorectal cancer samples and cell lines. Here, we show for the first time compelling data reporting the oncogenic role of UNR/ in human colorectal cancer.