COP1, the negative regulator of p53, is overexpressed in breast and ovarian adenocarcinomas.

The tumor suppressor protein p53 plays a central role in protecting normal cells from undergoing transformation. Thus, it is fitting that cancer cells selectively dampen the p53 response to gain a selective growth advantage. In fact, the p53 gene is the most commonly mutated tumor suppressor gene in human cancers, and if the gene is not mutated, then other components of the p53 pathways are skewed to dampen the p53 response to stress. We recently identified COP1 as a novel and critical negative regulator of p53. COP1 is a RING finger-containing protein that targets p53 for degradation to the proteasome and is necessary for p53 turnover in normal and cancer cells. However, the association between COP1 and cancer remains to be determined. We performed expression analysis of COP1 in ovarian and breast cancer tissue microarrays. COP1 is significantly overexpressed in 81% (25 of 32) of breast and 44% (76 of 171) of ovarian adenocarcinoma as assessed by in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry. Overexpression of COP1 correlated with a striking decrease in steady state p53 protein levels and attenuation of the downstream target gene, p21, in cancers that retain a wild-type p53 gene status. Overall, these results suggest that overexpression of COP1 contributes to the accelerated degradation of p53 protein in cancers and attenuates the tumor suppressor function of p53.