icb-1 Gene counteracts growth of ovarian cancer cell lines

Human gene icb-1 has been originally identified to be involved in differentiation processes of cancer cells. To examine the function of icb-1 in ovarian cancer, we knocked down its expression in three ovarian cancer cell lines and performed microarray-based gene expression profiling with subsequent gene network modeling. Loss of icb-1 expression accelerated proliferation of SK-OV-3, OVCAR-3 and OAW-42 cells and led to upregulation of ovarian cancer biomarkers like KLK10 and CLDN16. Most of the upregulated genes were part of oncogenic pathways regulated by ERα or TNF. Our data suggest that icb-1 gene inhibits growth and progression of ovarian cancer cells.