Zinc-finger protein 217 (ZNF217), which is overexpressed during cancer progression, can promote tumor cell immortalization. To examine the function of ZNF217, a global expression profile was carried out using Affymetrix Gene Chip analysis with HG-U133 plus 2.0 arrays in the ovarian cancer cell line HO-8910 after silencing of the ZNF217 gene. The results were analyzed using the Gene Ontology program to investigate the functional network affected by ZNF217 in ovarian cancer cells. Changes in the mRNA expression of the affected genes were confirmed by real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The results showed that the ZNF217 gene is a key regulator of ovarian cancer, as the silencing of ZNF217 resulted in significant down-regulation by at least 8-fold of 164 genes in the HO-8910 cell line compared to non-silenced control cells. Among these down-regulated genes were ALOX15, CD1D, FXYD3, GAS6, KRT4, LIN7B, MMP-24, PDZK1, PEX6, PRSS8, SLC2A9, STRN and WFDC2. Down-regulation was confirmed by real-time RT-PCR after the silencing of ZNF217 (p<0.05). The results suggest that ZNF217 plays a central role in malignant processes in ovarian cancer.

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