Mutual Regulation of FOXM1, NPM and ARF Proteins

ARF, NPM and FOXM1 proteins interact with each other in mammalian cells. We showed previously that proteasome inhibitors suppress not only FOXM1 expression, but also the expression of ARF and NPM proteins. Using RNA interference we found that the depletion of each of these proteins by RNAi in human cancer HeLa cells leads to down-regulation of the two other partners, suggesting that these proteins stabilize each other in human cancer cells. Since the suppression of FOXM1 is one of hallmarks of proteasome inhibition, suppression of ARF and NPM by proteasome inhibitors may be explained in part as a secondary effect of downregulation of FOXM1 that modulate stability of ARF and NPM1 proteins.