[Jan. 29] 134th IRCMS Seminar

December 17 2025

We would like to inform you that the 134th IRCMS seminar has been scheduled as below.
* This IRCMS seminar is open to everyone.

Date      : January 29, 2025 (Thursday)

Time      : 16:00-17:00

ZOOM　: Meeting ID: 997 4984 9228
            　 Passcode: Sem29Jan

Speaker : Dr. Yoshiaki Ito (National University of Singapore )

Title        : RUNX3 as a driver of cancer metastasis

Abstract:

We have been describing RUNX3 as a tumor suppressor.  One of the evidence is that RUNX3 cooperates with p53 to stimulate the expression of cell cycle inhibitor, p21.

When we expressed oncogenic Kras, inactivated Wnt and deleted p53 successively in mouse stomach chief cells, which are terminally differentiated, postmitotic cells, wildly invasive tumors were induced.  Surprisingly, these invasive tumor cells strongly expressed RUNX3 (1).  This RUNX3 cannot be a tumor suppressor.  To test this observation in a different way, we used gastric cancer-derived cell line which express RUNX3.  When we inoculated this cell line into spleen of mouse, we observed strong evidence of metastasis of this cell line to liver.  However, when we deleted RUNX3 from this cell line and performed the same expression, we observed complete loss of metastatic activity of this cell line (2).  Based on these preliminary observations, we started to study the ability of RUNX3 as a metastasis driver.

Major results that we have been observing are that RUNX3 together with MYC drives the expression of CD44 and Wnt5a which induce invasion and metastasis.  When p53 interacts with RUNX3, MYC cannot interact with RUNX3 and metastasis is inhibited (3).

Major papers:

1. Douchi et al: Induction of gastric cancer by successive oncogenic activation in the corpus Gastroenterology 2021;161:1907-1923.
2. Suda et al: Aberrant upregulation of RUNX3 activates developmental genes to drive metastasis in gastric cancer. Cancer Res Commun 2024:  4(2):279-292.
3. Lee J and Chuang L et al. Interplay among RUNX3, MYC and p53 in regulating metastasis (in preparation)