High level of BRD4 promotes non-small cell lung cancer progression.

// Yun-Fei Liao 1, 2, * , Yong-Bing Wu 2, * , Xiang Long 2, * , Shu-Qiang Zhu 2 , Chun Jin 1 , Jian-Jun Xu 2 , Jian-Yong Ding 1 1 Department of Thoracic Surgery, The Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P. R. China 2 Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang 330000, P. R. China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Jian-Yong Ding, e-mail: dingjianyongmd@163.com Jian-Jun Xu, e-mail: jianjxu@126.com Keywords: non-small cell lung cancer, bromodomain containing protein 4, proliferation, invasion, apoptosis Received: August 09, 2015      Accepted: January 13, 2016      Published: January 29, 2016 ABSTRACT Bromodomain containing protein 4 (BRD4), a member of the bromodomain and extra terminal domain (BET) protein family, has been shown to play important roles in tumor progression. However, its role in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is still largely unknown. Here, we found that BRD4 expression was significantly upregulated in NSCLC tissues and NSCLC cell lines with higher invasion and metastasis potentials. Suppression of BRD4 expression in NSCLC cell lines impaired cell invasion, inhibited cell proliferation, and accelerated cell apoptosis. Clinically, we observed that the BRD4 level was significantly related to histological type, lymph node metastasis, tumor stage and differentiation. More importantly, high level of BRD4 was closely correlated with the poor prognosis of NSCLC patients. Therefore, our study suggests that BRD4 is one of the major contributors to the invasion-prone phenotype of NSCLC, and a potential therapeutic target of NSCLC.