Background: There is no reliable marker available for early detection, diagnostic confirmation or disease prognosis of osteosarcoma. Cullin-1 (CUL1) is a newly reported tumor-related gene, and we aimed to unravel its role in osteosarcoma.
Methods: We used immunohistochemistry to analyze the correlation between CUL1 expression and clinicopathological variables and patient survival. To evaluate the function of CUL1, a group of 28 osteosarcoma patients were recruited for this study. The role of regulation of CUL1 in osteosarcoma was studied in vitro and in vivo. In addition, we further investigated the signaling pathway of CUL1 in osteosarcoma progression.
Results: We first discovered that CUL1 expression was up-regulated in human osteosarcoma tissues and inversely correlated with osteosarcoma differentiation. In addition, CUL1 promotes osteosarcoma cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo. We also found that CUL1 promotes osteosarcoma cell invasion and metastasis in vitro and in vivo. High levels of CUL1 promote osteosarcoma progression via up-regulation of MMP9 expression.
Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that increased CUL1 expression is significantly correlated with poor prognosis of patients with osteosarcoma. CUL1 might be an important marker and a therapeutic target for osteosarcoma.