HOXC10 promotes cell migration, invasion, and tumor growth in gastric carcinoma cells through upregulating proinflammatory cytokines.

HOXC10 plays a critical role in many cellular processes, such as proliferation, migration, and invasion, but the function of HOXC10 in gastric carcinoma is not clear. In this study, we aimed to investigate the expression profile of HOXC10 and its role in gastric carcinoma cells and in vivo experiments. HOXC10 expression patterns were detected in clinical samples and gastric cancer cells lines by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assays, and then, we focused on its role in regulating cell proliferation, cell cycle, migration, and invasion after transfection of silencing and overexpression plasmids in vitro and in vivo. Finally, we confirmed the correlation between HOXC10 and nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), and epidermal growth factor receptor expression. We found that HOXC10 expression increased in clinical samples, especially in poorly differentiated (PD) gastric cancer cells. Silencing HOXC10 suppressed proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro, and inhibited tumor growth and induced apoptosis in vivo. Overexpression of HOXC10 showed the opposite effect on PD gastric cancer cells. In addition, silencing HOXC10 inhibited the expression of interleukin-6, TNF-α, TGF-β, and epidermal growth factor, and overexpressing HOXC10 induced their expression both in vitro and in vivo. Luciferase reporter assays and chromatin immunoprecipitation indicated that HOXC10 may activate the NF-κB signaling pathway through regulation of P65 transcriptional activity by binding to the P65 promoter. HOXC10 may play an important role in PD gastric carcinoma cell proliferation, cell cycle, migration, invasion, and metastasis through upregulating proinflammatory cytokines via NF-κB pathway, suggesting HOXC10 may serve as a novel therapeutic target for PD gastric cancer.