Upregulation of centromere protein M promotes tumorigenesis: A potential predictive target for cancer in humans

Centromere protein M (CENPM), a protein required for chromosome separation, is involved in in mitosis. However, little has been reported about the roles of CENPM in various types of cancer. The present study identified that the mRNA expression levels of CENPM were significantly upregulated in 14 types of human cancer and identified a positive association between CENPM mRNA expression and patient mortality using the Oncomine, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis, Human Protein Atlas and Kaplan-Meier Plotter databases. A protein interaction network constructed with CENPM-interacting genes obtained from the cBioPortal demonstrated that nine genes participating in the cell cycle served key roles in the function of CENPM. Cell cycle analysis, reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction, a Cell Counting Kit-8-based proliferation assay and a terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labelling assay further revealed the tumorigenic and carcinogenic roles of CENPMin vitro. In addition, it was identified that the mRNA expression levels of five of the nine identified genes were significantly associated with CENPM in MCF7 cells and that CENPM was rarely mutated among various types of human cancer. In conclusion, the data from the present study revealed that CENPM exerted its pro-tumorigenic function by regulating cell cycle-associated protein expression and suggested that CENPM could be used as a prognostic marker for breast cancer.