WWOX, the tumour suppressor gene affected in multiple cancers

WWOX is a tumour suppressor gene affected in multiple cancers, especially in breast, prostate and ovary. This gene is located at the chromosomal area 16q23.3-24.1, which was identified as a common chromosomal fragile site FRA16D. WWOX turned out to possess tumour suppressor features despite the fact that the most basic (classical) way of tumour suppressor gene inactivation involves both alleles (e.g. through deletions, point mutations and promoter methylation), which is very rare event in a case of WWOX, occurring only in few cell lines. A large number of papers corroborate the phenomenon of correlation between the loss of WWOX expression and more aggressive/worse prognosis in many different types of tumours, for example breast cancer, nonsmall cell lung cancer, bladder cancer, gastric cancer or sporadic meningiomas. Ectopically increased WWOX expression promotes migration through basal membrane, however suppresses anchorage independent growth and induces normal-like colony formation in matrigel.