Expression of migfilin is increased in esophageal cancer and represses the Akt-β-catenin activation.

Cell adhesion proteins that connect each cell to neighboring cells and the extracellular matrix are an important determinant of cell morphology and metastasis. Migfilin is a member of LIM-containing protein family, mediated the linkage between cytoskeleton and focal adhesion through interacting with other proteins and involved in cell adhesion and motility. The present study used immunohistochemistry and Western blot analysis of migfilin in clinical specimens of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) to identify that the expression of migfilin was significantly upregulated in ESCC in concomitance with a nuclear-cytoplasm translocation compared to normal adjacent tissue. Alternately, using the published datasets we identified that the expression of β-catenin was upregulated in esophageal cancer cells with focal invasion, while inversely correlated with migfilin in esophageal cancer cell lines. We demonstrated that the reduced expression of β-catenin by migfilin was through the inhibition of Akt activation. In conclusion, these results illustrated that migfilin upregulated in ESCCs and repressed β-catenin in an Akt-GSK3β signaling dependent manner.