Endocrine Abstracts

PATZ1 is a recently discovered zinc finger protein that, due to the presence of the POZ domain, acts as a transcriptional repressor affecting the basal activity of different promoters, and associates with a variety of transcription factors (i.e. RNF4, HMGA1, gscl, SPBP). We have previously described, by using mice lacking the PATZ1 gene, its crucial role in spermatogenesis. Consistently, PATZ1-KO mice are unfertile and testes from these mice showed only few spermatocyte...

Using gene expression profiling we found that the CBX7 gene was drastically down-regulated in six thyroid carcinoma cell lines versus control cells. This suggested that CBX7 is an oncosuppressor. The aim of this study was to determine whether CBX7 is related to thyroid cancer phenotype, and to try to identify new tools for the diagnosis and prognosis of thyroid cancer. We thus evaluated CBX7 expression in various snap-frozen and paraffin-embedded thyroid carcinoma tissues of d...

PATZ1, a member of the POZ-ZF protein family of transcription factors is emerging as an important cancer-associated factor that can act either as oncogene or tumour-suppressor depending on the cellular context. Consistent with a tumour-suppressor role in thyroid cells, we have shown that PATZ1 is highly downregulated in anaplastic thyroid carcinomas compared to normal thyroid tissue and is a powerful inhibitor of anaplastic thyroid cancer cell survival, migration, invasiveness...