CRABP2 accelerates epithelial mesenchymal transition in serous ovarian cancer cells by promoting TRIM16 methylation via upregulating EZH2 expression

Recently, it was covered that cellular retinoic acid-binding protein 2 (CRABP2) is upregulated in ovarian cancer and participates in tumor progression, however, the specific mechanism remains to be explored. The pcDNA-CRABP2 or si-CRABP2 was transfected into SKOV3 and OVCAR3 ovarian cancer cells, respectively, and we observed that overexpression of CRABP2 inhibited cell apoptosis, promoted cell invasion and expression of epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) marker proteins, and transfection of si-CRABP2 had the opposite effect. Furthermore, we predicted that EZH2 interacted with CRABP2, and overexpression of CRABP2 promoted EZH2 expression, knockdown of CRABP2 inhibited EZH2 expression, and co-immunoprecipitation assay confirmed their binding relationship. The SKOV3 and OVCAR3 cells were then incubated with pcDNA-CRABP2 alone together with si-EZH2, and we found that si-EZH2 reversed the effect of pcDNA-CRABP2 on promotion of EZH2 expression, cell invasion and EMT maker protein levels. Next, we found that EZH2 could bind to DNMT1, and overexpression of EZH2 inhibited TRIM16 expression and knockdown of EZH2 promoted TRIM16 expression. Moreover, the promoter of TRIM16 contains the CpG island, and ChIP assay observed enriched DNMT1 on the promoter of TRIM16, and overexpression of EZH2 increased the promoter methylation level of TRIM16 and knockdown of EZH2 suppressed the methylation. The SKOV3 cells were incubated with si-EZH2 alone or combined with si-TRIM16, and we found that si-TRIM16 reversed the effect of si-EZH2. In vivo studies showed that knockdown of CRABP2 inhibited tumor volume and weight, suppressed the expression of EZH2 and EMT related proteins vimentin and snail, and increased the expression of TRIM16 and E-cadherin.