Bmi1 was clearly overexpressed across a broad spectrum of gastrointestinal cancers, and the expression of Bmi1 increased in a manner that reflected the pathologic malignant features of precancerous colonic tissues (low-grade dysplasia, 12.9 +/- 2.0%; high-grade dysplasia, 82.9 +/- 1.6%; cancer, 87.5 +/- 2.4%). p16 was also strongly expressed in high-grade dysplasia, but not in cancers. p16 promoter methylation was detected only in some Bmi1-positive neoplastic cells.
Bmi-1 mRNA level is consistently increased and Mel-18 mRNA level is consistently decreased in adjacent normal breast tissue of cancer patients as compared to normal breast tissue in women having had reduction mammoplasties.
BMI-1 is a member of the polycomb group of genes (PcGs), and it has been implicated in the development and progression of several malignancies, but its role in osteosarcoma remains to be elucidated.
Bmi1 is frequently overexpressed in human malignancies and therefore has key diagnostic and prognostic significance, and holds potential as a therapeutic target.
BMI1 plays critical roles in maintaining the self-renewal of hematopoietic, neural, intestinal stem cells, and cancer stem cells (CSCs) for a variety of cancer types.
BMI1 also plays a significant role in cancer etiology for its involvement in pathological progress such as epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and cancer stem cell maintenance, propagation, and differentiation.
Bmi1+Sox2+ cells were quiescent (BrdU+Bmi1+Sox2+ at 3.4 [1.5]% vs BrdU+Bmi1+Sox2- at 18.8 [3.4]%, n = 10, P = .009), consistent with a cancer stem cell phenotype.
Aberrant expression of Bmi1 has been reported to activate multiple growth-regulatory pathways and confer anti-apoptotic abilities to many cancer cells.
Although a role for BMI1 in cancer progression and its importance as a molecular target for cancer therapy has been established, information on the impact of silencing BMI1 in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and its consequence on radiotherapy have not been well studied.
Although the polycomb group gene, Bmi-1 that regulates the self-renewal of normal stem and progenitor cells has been implicated in the pathogenesis of many human malignancies, yet a role for Bmi-1 in influencing chemotherapy response has not been addressed before.
Amongst the commonly altered genes in cancer is the cell-cycle regulator cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2B (Cdkn2b), whose expression is negatively regulated by protein products of BMI1 proto-oncogene (Bmi1), MYC proto-oncogene (Myc) and T-box gene transcription factor 2 (Tbx2) genes.