www.Genes&Cancer.com Genes & Cancer, Vol. 9 (1-2), January 2018 The untold stories of the speech gene, the FOXP2 cancer gene Maria Jesus Herrero1,* and Yorick Gitton2,* 1 Center for Neuroscience Research, Children’s National Medical Center, NW, Washington, DC, USA 2 Sorbonne University, INSERM, CNRS, Vision Institute Research Center, Paris, France * Both authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Yorick Gitton, email:
[email protected] Keywords: FOXP2 factor, oncogene, cancer, prognosis, language Received: March 01, 2018 Accepted: April 02, 2018 Published: April 18, 2018 Copyright: Herrero and Gitton et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ABSTRACT FOXP2 encodes a transcription factor involved in speech and language acquisition. Growing evidence now suggests that dysregulated FOXP2 activity may also be instrumental in human oncogenesis, along the lines of other cardinal developmental transcription factors such as DLX5 and DLX6 [1–4]. Several FOXP family members are directly involved during cancer initiation, maintenance and progression in the adult [5–8]. This may comprise either a pro- oncogenic activity or a deficient tumor-suppressor role, depending upon cell types and associated signaling pathways. While FOXP2 is expressed in numerous cell types, its expression has been found to be down-regulated in breast cancer [9], hepatocellular carcinoma [8] and gastric cancer biopsies [10]. Conversely, overexpressed FOXP2 has been reported in multiple myelomas, MGUS (Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance), several subtypes of lymphomas [5,11], as well as in neuroblastomas [12] and ERG fusion-negative prostate cancers [13].