Abstract 1048: CD44 promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by regulating snail, ZEB1, and Caveolin-1 expression and predicts poor survival of ovarian cancer

CD44 is a stem cell marker which is involved in the generation of a stem cell niche and maintaining stem cell quiescence. Our data first demonstrated that CD44 knockdown by small silencing RNA abrogated both basal Snail expression and TGF-β1 induced Snail expression in HOPM and HOPM-snail cells. In addition, CD44 knockdown caused an decrease in ZEB1 expression. Further, RPPA data indicated that Caveolin-1 may be another regulative target of CD44, and western blotting analysis confirmed that CD44 knockdown caused an increase in Caveolin-1 expression. However, there was no obvious reciprocal regulation among ZEB1, Caveolin-1, and snail. Moreover, CD44 knockdown caused a decrease in cell migration, cell invasion and clone formation of HOPM and HOPM-snail cells. We next observed the role of CD44 expression in the prognosis of ovarian cancer. Over-expression of CD44 was associated with advanced FIGO stage (P Citation Format: Jiayi Zhou, Yan Du, Baoxin Luan, Yinhua Yu, Hongbo Zhao. CD44 promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by regulating snail, ZEB1, and Caveolin-1 expression and predicts poor survival of ovarian cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1048.