The Special AT-rich Sequence Binding Protein 1 (SATB1) and its role in solid tumors.

The Special AT-rich Sequence Binding Protein 1 (SATB1) exerts multiple functions, by influencing the structural organization of chromatin and interacting with several co-activators and co-repressors of transcription. Thus, SATB1 affects the expression of various genes by multiple mechanisms of action, involving three-dimensional chromatin architecture. More recently, SATB1 has been connected with solid tumors, tumorigenesis, tumor progression and tumor immunity. On the diagnostic side, SATB1 levels were found to correlate with clinicopathological features like increased TNM stage, reduced tumor differentiation, and a shorter overall survival. SATB1 expression was also identified as an independent prognostic marker in various cancers. Moreover, different gene knockdown or ectopic overexpression strategies in cancer cells have identified SATB1 to affect proliferation, cell cycle, apoptosis, cell morphology / cell polarity, EMT and multidrug-resistance as well as tumor formation, growth, invasion and metastasis in vivo. These processes are mediated through a great multitude of SATB1 target genes, including many (proto-) oncogenes. Functional and molecular studies on SATB1 in various cancers are comprehensively summarized, and the prospects and caveats of SATB1 as tumor marker and as putative target molecule are discussed.