TY - JOUR T1 - C/EBPδ demonstrates a dichotomous role in tumor initiation and promotion of epithelial carcinoma JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/528885 SP - 528885 AU - Ramlogan Sowamber AU - Rania Chehade AU - Mahmoud Bitar AU - Leah Dodds AU - Anca Milea AU - Brian Slomovitz AU - Patricia A Shaw AU - Sophia HL George Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/02/09/528885.abstract N2 - C/EBPδ (CEBPD), a gene part of the highly conserved basic-leucine zipper (b-ZIP) domain of transcriptional factors, is downregulated in 65% of high grade serous carcinoma of the ovary (HGSC). Overexpression of C/EBPδ in different tumors as glioblastoma and breast cancer either promotes tumor progression or inhibits growth. Despite these contradictory roles in different cancer types, we show that C/EBPδ overexpression has a consistent function of downregulating proliferation and promoting migration in fallopian tube epithelial cells (FTE). We show that the FTE have both mesenchymal and epithelial cell characteristics. Further, our data supports a role for C/EBPδ as an early regulatory transcriptional factor that promotes a mesenchymal to epithelial (MET) phenotype by upregulating E-cadherin and downregulating vimentin and N-cadherin in FTE cells. We demonstrate that overexpression of C/EBPδ in ovarian and breast cancer cell lines have consistent effects and phenotype as the FTE cells. Our findings suggest a role for C/EBPδ in the early events of ovarian serous carcinogenesis which may be used to help further understand how the disease develops from a premalignant cells. ER -