SNAI1 overexpression induces stemness and promotes ovarian cancer cell invasion and metastasis

Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer among women worldwide. Detectionof metastasis of ovarian cancer is crucial for diagnosis and prolongs the lifeof patients. This study focused on whether SNAI1 overexpression relates to invasionof ovarian cancer in vitro and in vivo. Invasion, colony formation and wound healingassays and flow cytometric analysis were performed to test the invasion and proliferationof SKOV3 ovarian cancer cells after transfection. The effect of SNAI1 on ovariancancer in vivo was validated using a murine xenograft model. In vitro, SNAI1 upregulationled to an increased percent of CD133+ SKOV3 cells and promoted SKOV3 cell invasionand proliferation. In vivo, the SNAI1 overexpression group showed the highestrate of tumor growth compared with SNAI2 and the control group (60 and 50%, respectively).Our results show that SNAI1 expression induces an increase in the number of CD133+cells, a change important for the epithelial to mesenchymal transition and theproliferation in ovarian cancer. It is suggested that SNAI1 may serve as a noveltarget for ovarian cancer prediction and therapy.