Abstract
BACKGROUND: Ovarian cancer, a prevalent malignancy with the highest fatality rate among gynecological cancers, continues to face challenges in the development of effectively targeted therapeutic approaches. While the FAM111B gene has been implicated in various cancer types, its specific role in ovarian cancer remains poorly understood. METHODS: The ES2 and A2780 ovarian cell lines were exploited to explore the cellular proliferation, migration, invasion, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in FAM111B knockdown experiments. We constructed a mouse tumor model to investigate the impact of FAM111B silencing in vivo; employed tissue microarray to explore the prognostic value of different FAM111B expression levels; and applied western-blot assay, MYC-overexpression rescue experiments, protein transcriptomics, and bioinformatics analysis to examine the downstream molecular mechanisms underlying FAM111B actions. RESULTS: Our in vitro experiments indicated that the inhibition of FAM111B resulted in reduced cellular proliferation, migration, invasion, and EMT in ovarian cancer cell lines and in the suppression of tumor growth in a mouse xenograft model. Immunohistochemical analyses conducted on tissue-microarray samples obtained from patients with serous ovarian cancer indicated that elevated levels of FAM111B expression were associated with unfavorable prognostic outcomes. The silencing of FAM111B mechanistically constrained MYC expression, with subsequent MYC overexpression reversing the phenotypic suppression caused by FAM111B silencing. Additionally, protein transcriptomic analysis implicated FAM111B in genetic-information processing via the MYC pathway, underscoring FAM111B's central role in ovarian cancer tumorigenesis. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that FAM111B may serve as a novel biomarker and potential therapeutic target in ovarian cancer.