Silencing the receptor of activated C-kinase 1 (RACK1) suppresses tumorigenicity in epithelial ovarian cancer in vitro and in vivo.

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is a fatal disease for women due to lack of effective diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Thus, it is important to identify and develop specific markers to formulate novel therapeutic methods for advanced and recurrent ovarian cancer. We found that the receptor of activated C-kinase 1 (RACK1) was elevated in most EOCs compared to normal ovarian tissue, and its expression levels correlated with key pathological characteristics including clinical stage and metastasis by quantitative PCR and immunohistochemistry. In addition, we found that downregulation of RACK1 expression using an RNA silencing approach in SKVO3 tumor cells significantly suppressed the proliferation, migration and invasion in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. Furthermore, it is found that RACK1 silencing was able to significantly suppress constitutive phosphorylation of Akt and MAPK, which may contribute to the inhibition of tumor growth. These results suggest that RACK1 can act as a new promising diagnostic biomarker and a potential anticancer therapeutic target for EOC.