CITED1 gene promotes proliferation, migration and invasion in papillary thyroid cancer

Thyroid cancer is the most common malignancy of the endocrine organs. In order to further understand the tumorigenesis and progression of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), the present study performed whole transcriptome sequence analysis. It was found that Cbp/p300-interacting transactivators with glutamic acid [E] and aspartic acid [D]-rich C-terminal domain 1 (CITED1) was a novel potential PTC-associated gene in thyroid cancer. The expression level and clinicopathological features of CITED1 were then assessed in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The expression of CITED1 was knocked down and the biological function of CITED1 in PTC cell lines was examined. The results showed that upregulated CITED1 was associated with lymph node metastasis (P=0.006) and clinical stage (P=0.003). In order to differentiate PTC tissues and normal tissues, an area under the curve was constructed of a receiver operating characteristic of 91.3% for the TCGA cohort and 85.3% for a validated cohort. The downregulated expression of CITED1 significantly inhibited cell proliferation, colony formation, migration and invasion in the PTC cell lines. The present study demonstrated that CITED1 is important in the tumorigenesis and metastasis of PTC and may be a potential therapeutic target in PTC.