Functions of intracytoplasmic connexin in tumor progression / 肿瘤研究与临床

A considerable amount of evidence established that gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) suppresses tumor development by halting the stage of tumor promotion.Consistently,GJIC is downregulated in tumors.The downregulation of GJIC is caused by not only the reduced expression level of connexin proteins but also their aberrant cytoplasmic localization.Although it has been thought long that cytoplasmic localization of conncxin proteins is merely one of the mechanisms of the downregu]ation of GJIC,careful studies with human tumor samples indicated that the expression level of intracytoplasmic connexin proteins had different biological functions.