ALOX12B promotes carcinogenesis in cervical cancer by regulating the PI3K/ERK1 signaling pathway

Cervical cancer is a malignant disease and a threat to women's health worldwide. Surgical resection followed by radiotherapy or chemotherapy is the main treatment strategy for cervical cancer; however, patients with cervical cancer, especially those with late-stage disease, may not benefit from these traditional therapies, which results in poor clinical outcome. ALOX12B is a gene encoding lipoxygenase, and a mutation in ALOX12B was detected in lung and breast cancer. Furthermore, ALOX12B is essential to the proliferation of epidermoid carcinoma cells; however, the role of ALOX12B in cervical cancer has not been studied thus far, to the best of our knowledge. In the present study, the expression levels of ALOX12B were reduced in cervical cancer cells by lentiviral transfection, and it was found that both cell proliferation and clone formation ability were significantly reduced, and the cell cycle was blocked at G₁ phase. Tumor growth was also suppressed in vivo in a xenograft tumor model, but the migration of tumor cells was not affected by ALOX12B. Subsequently, using western blotting, it was demonstrated that knockdown of ALOX12B decreased the expression levels of PI3K, MEK1, ERK1, C-fos and cdc25. Meanwhile, overexpression of ALOX12B increased the expression levels of these five molecules. Conclusively, ALOX12B promoted cell proliferation in cervical cancer via regulation of the PI3K/ERK1 signaling pathway. The present study may improve our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the function of ALOX12B in cervical cancer and inform new therapeutic strategies.