Aberrant Expression of Forkhead Box Proteins in Prostate Cancer Development

Abstract

Prostate cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in men. The evolutionarily-conserved Forkhead-box (FOX) family proteins are able to bind to promoters and enhancers in a sequence-specific way to regulate gene expression. FOX proteins participate in the most diverse range of biological functions from genetic diseases to cancers. Recent studies over the past few years demonstrated the dysregularity of the FOX family proteins which lead to prostate cancer pathogenesis and their role as an oncogene or tumor suppressor in prostate cancer. In addition, experimental studies have shown that the dysregulation of FOX proteins is associated with cancer initiation, proliferation, migration, invasion, metastasis and survival. In this review, we summarized the roles of FOX proteins in the pathogenesis of prostate cancer and evaluated their potential as targets for therapeutic intervention.