8B). To further confirm the association of AIB1 with Nrf2 in vitro, GST pull-down assays were performed. GST-Nrf2 fusion protein directly interacted with AIB1 in vitro (Fig. 8C). AIB1 is a multidomain protein that contains bHLH/Per/ARNT/Sim homologous (PAS)

domain, serine/threonine-rich (S/T) region, receptor interaction domain (RID), CBP interaction domain (CID), and histone acetyltransferase (HAT) domain (Fig. 8D, upper panel).5 To identify BGJ398 in vitro the domains within AIB1 required for interaction with Nrf2, we examined the ability of GST-Nrf2 to interact with five fragments of AIB1 fused with Flag-tag. The results showed that AIB1 interacted with Nrf2 through its S/T and HAT domains (Fig. 8D, lower panel). Collectively, these data suggest that AIB1 serves as an essential coactivator for Nrf2 activation by physically interacting with Nrf2 to enhance its transcriptional activity for antioxidants such as GPx2, GCLC, and GCLM, as well as drug efflux genes such as ABCC2 and ABCG2 (Fig. 8E). It has

been shown that AIB1 is overexpressed in multiple human cancers and plays an important role in tumorigenesis.5 However, the expression profile and the role of AIB1 in CCA remain unclear. In the present study we found that the overexpression of AIB1 was detected in 55% of the CCA tissues and all CCA cell lines examined, suggesting that AIB1 may have a role in CCA progression. Furthermore, we found that down-regulation of AIB1 decreased CCA cell proliferation and colony formation, whereas up-regulation of AIB1 increased CCA cell proliferation 上海皓元医药股份有限公司 GSK2118436 purchase and colony formation, indicating that AIB1 plays an important role in CCA progression. In agreement with our and others’ previous studies that the oncogenic effect of AIB1 can be attributed to activation of the Akt signaling pathway in a variety of cancers such as breast cancer,15 prostate cancer,16 and HCC,17 in this study we found

that activation of Akt also significantly contributed to the oncogenic effect of AIB1 in CCA cells. AIB1 knockdown in QBC939 cells resulted in down-regulation of p-Akt and cell cycle arrest at the G2/M phase through decreasing the expression of Cyclin A, Cyclin B, and Cdk1, which could be reproduced by treating cells with PI3K/Akt inhibitor LY294002. This suggests that activation of Akt is essential for AIB1-mediated cell cycle progression in CCA cells. Our previous study showed that AIB1 knockdown in HepG2 cells resulted in down-regulation of p-Akt and G1 arrest.17 Therefore, AIB1 regulates different phages of cell cycle progression in a cellular and signaling context-dependent manner,5 which is in agreement with the observations that Akt can regulate G1/S or G2/M transition in a cell context-dependent manner.18 Besides promoting cell proliferation, Akt can promote cellular survival and chemoresistance.