SGK2 is overexpressed in colon cancer and promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition in colon cancer cells.

Human cancers often related to signal pathway variation, the phosphoinositide-3-kinase (PI3K) pathway is one of it. AKT kinase family is the most common downstream of PI3K pathway. The serum and glucocorticoid kinase 2(SGK2) is similar to AKT as the downstream of PI3K pathway. Up to now, we have few understanding of SGK2 in colon cancer. We determined the 20 colon cancer samples mRNA level. Later, we silence SGK2 in colon cancer cells. We found that SGK2 is up-regulated in colon cancer tissue/cells and have positive correlation with cell migration and invasive potential in human colon cancer cell line CACO2 and HCT116. The expression level of SGK2 have positive correlation with expression of mesenchymal marker N-cadherin and Vimentin and negative correlation with the expression of epithelial marker E-cadherin in CACO2 and HCT116 cells. In short, our research indicate that SGK2 is overexpressed in colon cancer and promotes EMT in colon cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]