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Departments of ¹ Molecular and Cellular Oncology and ² Breast Medical Oncology, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; ³ Department of Surgery, Kaohsiung Medical University, and ⁴ Department of Medical Research, E-DA Hospital, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Republic of China; and ⁵ Cancer Biology Program, Graduate School of Biomedical Science, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas

Requests for reprints: Mien-Chie Hung, Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology, Unit 108, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Boulevard, Houston, TX 77030. Phone: 713-792-7477; Fax: 713-794-0209. E-mail: mhung{at}mdanderson.org

IFN-inducible proteins are known to mediate IFN-directed antitumor effects. The human IFN-inducible protein absent in melanoma 2 (AIM2) gene encodes a 39-kDa protein, which contains a 200-amino-acid repeat as a signature of HIN-200 family (hematopoietic IFN-inducible nuclear proteins). Although AIM2 is known to inhibit fibroblast cell growth in vitro, its antitumor activity has not been shown. Here, we showed that AIM2 expression suppressed the proliferation and tumorigenicity of human breast cancer cells, and that AIM2 gene therapy inhibited mammary tumor growth in an orthotopic tumor model. We further showed that AIM2 significantly increased sub-G₁ phase cell population, indicating that AIM2 could induce tumor cell apoptosis. Moreover, AIM2 expression greatly suppressed nuclear factor-B transcriptional activity and desensitized tumor necrosis factor-–mediated nuclear factor-B activation. Together, these results suggest that AIM2 associates with tumor suppression activity and may serve as a potential therapeutic gene for future development of AIM2-based gene therapy for human breast cancer. [Mol Cancer Ther 2006;5(1):1–7]

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Note: I-F. Chen and F. Ou-Yang contributed equally to this work.

J-Y. Hung is a visiting scientist from the Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Republic of China. H. Wang is currently at the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Received 8/ 8/05; revised 10/17/05; accepted 11/ 2/05.