E47 upregulates ΔNp63α to promote growth of squamous cell carcinoma

Targeted therapy has greatly improved both survival and prognosis of cancer patients. However, while therapeutic treatment of adenocarcinoma has been advanced greatly, progress in treatment of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) has been slow and ineffective. Therefore, it is of great importance to decipher mechanisms and identify new drug targets involved in squamous cell carcinoma development. In this study, we demonstrate that E47 plays the distinctive and opposite roles on cell proliferation in adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. While E47 suppresses cell proliferation in adenocarcinoma cells, it functions as a oncoprotein to promote cell proliferation and tumor growth of squamous cell carcinoma. Mechanistically, we show that E47 can directly bind to the promoter and transactivate ΔNp63 gene expression in squamous cell carcinoma cells, resulting in upregulation of cyclins D1/E1 and downregulation of p21, and thereby promoting cell proliferation and tumor growth. We further show that expression of E2A (E12/E47) is positively correlated with p63 and that high expression of E2A is associated with poor outcomes in clinical samples of squamous cell carcinoma. These results highlight that the E47-ΔNp63α axis may be potential therapeutic targets for treatment of squamous cell carcinoma.