A previous immunohistochemistry study showed that MTF1 expression is relatively high in human cancers such as lung, breast, and cervical carcinomas compared to that of adjacent normal tissues.22,51 MTF1 facilitates the proliferation of murine fibrosarcoma cells, and knockdown of MTF1 suppressed the malignant progression of advanced-stage head-and-neck squamous cell carcinoma.52,53 YY2, a transcription factor with activation and repression domains, plays transactivation or transcriptional inhibition roles in the regulation of target genes. Elevated expression of WT YY2 was reported to promote neuronal cell death and change the direction of neuronal differentiation in vitro.54 Moreover, analysis of 698 glioma tissue samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas database indicated that YY2 is overexpressed in glioma tissues, in accordance with the results from the present study.
