Role of osteopontin in the pathophysiology of cancer

Abstract

Osteopontin (OPN) is a multifunctional cytokine that impacts cell proliferation, survival, drug resistance, invasion, and stem like behavior. Due to its critical involvement in regulating cellular functions, its aberrant expression and/or splicing is functionally responsible for undesirable alterations in disease pathologies, specifically cancer. It is implicated in promoting invasive and metastatic progression of many carcinomas. Due to its autocrine and paracrine activities OPN has been shown to be a crucial mediator of cellular cross talk and an influential factor in the tumor microenvironment. OPN has been implicated as a prognostic and diagnostic marker for several cancer types. It has also been explored as a possible target for treatment. In this article we hope to provide a broad perspective on the importance of OPN in the pathophysiology of cancer.

Keywords: Cancer; Isoforms; Matricellular; Osteopontin; Signaling.

Fig. 1

OPN influences all the six hallmarks of cancer and also three of the enabling characteristics of cancer. As of this time there is no data to clearly implicate a role for OPN in genomic instability and mutation.

Fig. 2

Cross-cancer alteration for SPP1 (52 studies/1 gene). The data depicts the frequency of alteration in SPP1 across several cancer types. This data was obtained by querying the CBio Database for the transcript and mutation data for SPP1, the gene for OPN protein. This data queries 52 independent studies that are deposited at CBio Cancer Genomics Portal (Cerami et al., 2012).