Investigation of sp1 and sp3 gene expression levels in colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Specificity protein 1 (Sp1) is a well-known member of a family of transcription factors that also includes (Sp3). Sp1 and Sp3 proteins can enhance or repress gene expression by binding to similar, if not the same, DNA tracts and compete for binding. Sp1 activates the transcription of many cellular genes that contain putative CG-rich Sp-binding sites in their promoters. Evidence exists that the Sp-family of proteins regulates the expression of genes that play pivotal roles in cell proliferation and metastasis of various tumors. Also, they are implicated in a great variety of the essential biological processes and have been proven valuable in cell growth, differentiation, apoptosis, and carcinogenesis. We collected cancerous tissues and normal adjacent tissues from the 41 patients who were diagnosed with CRC clinically. We detected the levels of mRNA for both Sp1 and Sp3 by using real-time PCR in both cancerous and tumor-adjacent normal tissues of the samples. We analyzed the results of real-time PCR by using (IBM SPSS Statistics version 22) software. In the results of this study, there were no significant differences in the expression levels of both Sp1 and Sp3 in tumor tissues compared to normal tissues (p> 0.05), as well as no association with clinicopathological factors. Sp1 expression was found highly correlated to the expression of Sp3 (r = 0.827). In conclusion, our results suggest that Sp1 and Sp3 may not present an important role in CRC carcinogenesis.