Up-regulation of peroxiredoxin-1 promotes cell proliferation and metastasis and inhibits apoptosis in cervical cancer

Objective: To investigate the effect of peroxiredoxin 1 (PRDX1) on the biological behavior of cervical cancer cells and the possible mechanism. Materials and methods: The expression of PRDX1 in human cervical cancer tissues and adjacent non-tumor tissues were detected by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Lentivirus containing PRDX1-cDNA or shRNA against PRDX1 was constructed to overexpress or knockdown PRDX1 in SiHa cervical cancer cells. Cell proliferation was tested by CCK-8 and BrdU incorporation assay and cell apoptosis was evaluated by AnnexinV-PE /7AAD assay. Scratch wound and transwell invasion assay were used to test migration and invasion activity after PRDX1 was overexpressed or suppressed. Furthermore, the effect of PRDX1 on cell proliferation and apoptosis was also studied using a xenograft model of nude mice. Results: The expression of PRDX1 protein was significantly up-regulated in the tumor tissues compared with the paired adjacent non-tumor tissues. Meanwhile, PRDX1 overexpression was associated with tumor stage, lymphatic metastasis and differentiation. Overexpression of PRDX1 significantly promoted proliferation and inhibited apoptosis by increasing the expression of Nanog, proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), B-cell lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2) and downregulating the expression of Bcl2-associated X protein (BAX) in SiHa cervical cancer cells. Moreover, PRDX1 overexpression increased invasion and migration of SiHa cervical cancer cells via up-regulating the expression of Snail and matrix metalloprotein 9 (MMP-9) and down-regulating the expression of E-cadherin. Knockdown of PRDX1 resulted in the opposite results. The role of PRDX1 in promoting SiHa cervical cancer cell proliferation and inhibiting apoptosis has also been confirmed in vivo in a mouse xenograft model. Conclusions: PRDX1 promoted cell proliferation, migration, and invasion and suppressed apoptosis of cervical cancer possibly via regulating the expression of related protein.