Kinesin family member 20A (KIF20A) is a member of the kinesin family. It transports chromosomes during mitosis, plays a key role in cell division. Recently, studies proved that KIF20A was highly expressed in cancer. High expression of KIF20A was correlated with poor overall survival (OS). In this review, we summarized all the cancer that highly expressed KIF20A, described the role of KIF20A in cancer. We also organized phase I and phase II clinical trials of KIF20A peptides vaccine. All results indicated that KIF20A was a promising therapeutic target for multiple cancer.

Adult fibrosarcoma is an aggressive subtype of soft tissue sarcoma (STS), in which high expression of KIF20A indicates a poor prognosis. However, the precise role of KIF20A in fibrosarcoma progression remains unknown. In this study, we initially examined KIF20A expression and function in the human fibrosarcoma cell line HT-1080. The results showed that KIF20A was highly expressed in HT-1080, knockdown of KIF20A impaired cell proliferation, migration, invasion and induced G2/M arrest and cell apoptosis. Transcriptome study suggested that PI3K-Akt signal pathway was involved in these biological changes. We confirmed that PI3K-Akt and NF-κB signaling pathways were impaired after the down-regulation of KIF20A, which can be reversed by the Akt activator SC79 in HT-1080 in vitro. In a xenograft mouse model, knockdown of KIF20A inhibited tumor growth, Ki67 expression and liver metastasis. Taken together, our results suggested that KIF20A promoted fibrosarcoma progression via PI3K-Akt signaling pathway and might be a potential therapeutic target for fibrosarcoma.

Background: Osteosarcoma (OS) is one of the malignant bone tumors occurring in both human and canine, and in both of them, it is characterized by a high rate of metastasis and poor prognosis. Cross-species analysis reveals previously neglected molecular or signaling pathways involved in the progression of diseases and dogs are genetically comparable to humans and live in similar environments. Therefore, the aim of this study was to find out OS hub genes through a cross-species analysis. Materials & Methods: All the human and canine OS gene expression data obtained by the Affymetrix platform were collected. After quality assessment and normalization, co-expression network was performed using weight gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). Species specific modules and consensus modules were identified. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks analysis was performed based on consensus gene modules. Then, consensus modules were functionally annotated and correlated with clinical traits. Hub nodes were identified by a subnetwork analysis of PPI network and WGCNA module membership. Modules of interest and hub nodes were validated in an external dataset. Results: Three modules for the human network, 7 modules for the canine network and 4 consensus modules were identified. The consensus module 3 (C3) showed a significant correlation with the metastatic status in the training dataset and a significant correlation with metastasis free survival in the external dataset. Cluster of differentiation 86 (CD86) was identified as the hub gene of C3, showing a significant correlation with metastasis free survival. Conclusion: Genes in C3 play an important role in OS metastasis, while CD86 might be a potential molecular biomarker for OS metastasis.

TRIM59 is a protein that is highly expressed in a variety of tumors and promotes tumor development. However, the use of TRIM59 as tumor diagnosis and prognosis biomarker has not been fully explored. We collected datasets from the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) and gene expression omnibus (GEO) to investigate its potential as a biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis. A total of 46 studies, including 11,558 patients were included in this study. Here, we showed that TRIM59 was significantly upregulated in 15 type of human solid tumors in comparison to their adjacent tissues. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) results provided further evidence for the use of TRIM59 as a potential tumor diagnosis biomarker. Overall survival (OS) was compared between TRIM59 high expression and low expression groups. High expression of TRIM59 indicated a poor prognosis in multiple solid tumors. Taken together, these analyses showed that TRIM59 was upregulated in various types of tumors and had the potential to be used as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in human solid tumors.