www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/ Oncotarget, 2018, Vol. 9, (No. 14), pp: 11691-11706 Research Paper Hepatocyte growth factor activator inhibitor type-2 (HAI- 2)/SPINT2 contributes to invasive growth of oral squamous cell carcinoma cells Koji Yamamoto1,2, Makiko Kawaguchi1, Takeshi Shimomura1, Aya Izumi1, Kazuomi Konari1, Arata Honda3, Chen-Yong Lin4, Michael D. Johnson4, Yoshihiro Yamashita2, Tsuyoshi Fukushima1 and Hiroaki Kataoka1 1Section of Oncopathology and Regenerative Biology, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan 2Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan 3Institute of Laboratory Animals, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan 4Lambardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University, School of Medicine, Washington, DC, USA Correspondence to: Hiroaki Kataoka, email:
[email protected] Keywords: oral squamous cell carcinoma; HAI-2; SPINT2; prostasin; HAI-1 Received: October 11, 2017 Accepted: February 01, 2018 Published: February 08, 2018 Copyright: Yamamoto 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 Hepatocyte growth factor activator inhibitor (HAI)-1/SPINT1 and HAI-2/SPINT2 are membrane-anchored protease inhibitors having homologous Kunitz-type inhibitor domains. They regulate membrane-anchored serine proteases, such as matriptase and prostasin. Whereas HAI-1 suppresses the neoplastic progression of keratinocytes to invasive squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) through matriptase inhibition, the role of HAI-2 in keratinocytes is poorly understood. In vitro homozygous knockout of the SPINT2 gene suppressed the proliferation of two oral SCC (OSCC) lines (SAS and HSC3) but not the growth of a non-tumorigenic keratinocyte line (HaCaT).