Downregulation of aquaporin 3 inhibits cellular proliferation, migration and invasion in the MDA‑MB‑231 breast cancer cell line

Abstract

Aquaporins are membrane proteins that regulate cellular water flow. Recently, aquaporins have been proposed as mediators of cancer cell biology. A subset of aquaporins, referred to as aquaglyceroporins are known to facilitate the transport of glycerol. The present study describes the effect of gene knockdown of the aquaglyceroporin AQP3 on MDA‑MB‑231 breast cancer cell proliferation, migration, invasion, adherence and response to the chemotherapeutic agent 5‑fluorouracil. shRNA mediated AQP3 gene knockdown induced a 28% reduction in cellular proliferation (P<0.01), a 39% decrease in migration (P<0.0001), a 24% reduction in invasion (P<0.05) and a 25% increase in cell death at 100 µM 5‑FU (P<0.01). Analysis of cell permeability to water and glycerol revealed that MDA‑MB‑231 cells with knocked down AQP3 demonstrated a modest decrease in water permeability (17%; P<0.05) but a more marked decrease in glycerol permeability (77%; P<0.001). These results suggest that AQP3 has a role in multiple aspects of breast cancer cell pathophysiology and therefore represents a novel target for therapeutic intervention.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.3892/ol.2018.8759
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Biosciences
College of Health & Life Sciences > Chronic and Communicable Conditions
College of Health & Life Sciences > Clinical and Systems Neuroscience
College of Health & Life Sciences
College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Biosciences > Cell & Tissue Biomedical Research
College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Biosciences > Cellular and Molecular Biomedicine
Additional Information: © Arif et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License.
Publication ISSN: 1792-1082
Last Modified: 12 Feb 2024 08:19
Date Deposited: 29 May 2018 12:05
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.spa ... 92/ol.2018.8759 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2018-05
Published Online Date: 2018-05-21
Accepted Date: 2017-12-11
Authors: Arif, Muhammad
Kitchen, Philip (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-1558-4673)
Conner, Matthew
Hill, Eric (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-9419-1500)
Nagel, David (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-9055-1775)
Bill, Roslyn (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-1331-0852)
Dunmore, Simon
Armesilla, Angel
Gross, Stephane (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-0867-8866)
Carmichael, Amtul
Conner, Alex
Brown, James (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-3504-7373)

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