ZNF488 Promotes the Invasion and Migration of Pancreatic Carcinoma Cells through the Akt/mTOR Pathway

OBJECTIVE: Studies have demonstrated that zinc finger protein 488 (ZNF488) is highly expressed in pancreatic carcinoma (PC), but its effect on PC and its molecular mechanism remains unclear. METHODS: Real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was employed to detect the ZNF488 expression in PC patients' cancer tissues and cell lines. After interfering with or overexpressing ZNF488 in PANC-1 and AsPC-1 cells, respectively, the CCK-8, cell cloning, Transwell, and scratch assays were performed to detect cell proliferation, cell viability, invasion ability, and migration ability. In addition, Western blot was applied to assess the protein expression of Akt, p-Akt, mTOR, and p-mTOR in the Akt-mTOR pathway. RESULTS: The ZNF488 expression was evidently raised in PC tissues and cell lines, and the starBase V3.0 database indicated that the higher the ZNF488 expression, the lower the survival rate of PC patients. Furthermore, we discovered that overexpressing ZNF488 can markedly promote the proliferation, invasion, and migration of PC cells. At the same time, highly expressed ZNF488 distinctly increased the p-Akt and p-mTOR expressions and the p-Akt/Akt and p-mTOR/mTOR ratios. However, after knocking down the ZNF488 expression, it had the opposite results. In addition, the Akt agonist SC79 can alleviate the effect of ZNF488 knockdown on Akt/mTOR pathway-related proteins, while Akt inhibitor AZD5363 had the opposite effect. CONCLUSION: ZNF488 could promote the proliferation, invasion, and migration of PC cells, and its mechanism may be related to the activation of the Akt/mTOR pathway. This study demonstrated that ZNF488 could be used as a molecular target for diagnosing and treating PC.