Effects of CUX1 on the proliferation and metastasis of colorectal cancer cells and related mechanism

Objective To investigate the effect of CUX1 gene on the proliferation and metastasis of colorectal cancer and related mechanism. Methods The expression of CUX1 in cancer and adjacent normal tissues of colorectal cancer patients was analyzed using TCGA database. The expression of CUX1 in colorectal cancer tissues was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR). The GEPIA database was used to analyze the effect of CUX1 expression on the overall survival rate of patients with colorectal cancer after surgery. Furthermore, siRNA-NC and siRNA-CUX1 were transfected into human colon cancer cells. CCK-8 assay and Transwell assay were used to detect the effects of CUX1 on the proliferation and metastasis of colorectal cancer cells. The interference efficiency of CUX1 and the expression of E-cadherin, Vimentin and N-cadherin proteins were detected by Western blot. Results According to TCGA database and qRT-PCR, CUX1 was highly expressed in colorectal cancer tissues (P<0.05). The results of GEPIA database showed that the overall survival rate of the low CUX1 expression group was significantly better than that of the high expression group (P<0.01). Transwell assay showed siRNA-CUX1 reduced the metastatic ability of colorectal cancer cells (P<0.001). CCK-8 assay showed that siRNA-CUX1 inhibited the proliferation of colorectal cancer cells (P<0.001). Western blot showed that the expression of CUX1, N-cadherin and Vimentin in colorectal cancer cells decreased but the expression of E-cadherin increased after siRNA-CUX1 transfection (P<0.05). Conclusions Knockdown of CUX1 can inhibit the proliferation and metastasis of colorectal cancer.