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. 2025 Feb;203(2):670-683.
doi: 10.1007/s12011-024-04206-4. Epub 2024 May 1.

Research on the Effect and Mechanism of Selenium on Colorectal Cancer Through TRIM32

Xiaohua Cai  1 , Yintong Su  1 , Jiayu Ning  1 , Xingxing Fan  1 , Mei Shen  2
Affiliations

Research on the Effect and Mechanism of Selenium on Colorectal Cancer Through TRIM32

Xiaohua Cai et al. Biol Trace Elem Res. 2025 Feb.

Abstract

The intake of selenium (Se) in the human body is negatively correlated with the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC), but its mechanism in the occurrence and development of CRC is not clear. This study aimed to evaluate the therapeutic effect of Se on CRC, and explore the anti-tumor effect of Se supplementation on CRC and its molecular mechanism. In this study, we utilized colony formation assay, cell scratch test, Transwell migration, and flow cytometry to assess cell proliferation, migration, and apoptosis. Our findings demonstrate that Se effectively suppresses the growth and proliferation of CRC cell lines HCT116 and SW480 and promoting cellular apoptosis. In vivo experiments demonstrated a significant inhibitory effect of Se on tumor growth. CRC-related datasets were extracted from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases for differential expression analysis of TRIM32 and survival analysis. We found that TRIM32 was highly expressed in tumor tissues of CRC patients and correlated with a poor prognosis. Furthermore, through RNA sequencing analysis, we identified TRIM32 as a gene that was significantly decreased after Se treatment in HCT116 cells. This finding was subsequently validated by Western blot results. Moreover, TRIM32 knockdown combined with Se treatment significantly inhibited cell growth proliferation and migration and further induced apoptosis of colorectal cancer cells. In conclusion, our findings provided evidence that Se inhibited the growth of colorectal cancer cells by down-regulating TRIM32.

Keywords: Colorectal cancer; Mechanism research; Selenium; TRIM32.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics Approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Southern Medical University (no. 2021–0024) and the Experimental Animal Ethics Committee of Southern Medical University (L2019074). Consent to Participate: All study participants signed informed consent. Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

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