SOX4
Overview
SOX4 (SRY-Box Transcription Factor 4) is a transcription factor involved in neuronal, lymphocyte, and cardiac development, and has established roles in cancer progression, EMT, and stem cell maintenance. In glioma, SOX4 is the top-ranked marker of the neural stem/progenitor compartment in oligodendroglioma by single-cell RNA-seq, marking the rare proliferative cells at the apex of the tumor hierarchy.
Alterations observed in the corpus
- SOX4 is the highest-ranking gene (by PC2/PC3 loading) in the stem/progenitor program across 4,347 single cells from 6 untreated grade II IDH-mutant 1p/19q-codeleted oligodendrogliomas (Smart-Seq2). The PC2/PC3 stem/progenitor signature overlaps glioblastoma CSC signatures (hypergeometric P = 1.5×10⁻⁴) and is preferentially expressed in prenatal brain (P = 8×10⁻¹⁸). SOX4 expression was also validated by RNA in situ hybridization on tumor sections. PMID:27806376
- Recurrently amplified focal SCNA target in MIBC (TCGA 412-tumor cohort); listed among known bladder-cancer amplification targets including AHR, BCL2L1, CCND1, CCNE1, E2F3, EGFR, ERBB2, FGFR3, GATA3, KRAS, MDM2, TERT PMID:28988769
Cancer types (linked)
- ODG — SOX4 is the defining top marker of the stem/progenitor compartment (1.5–8% of cells per tumor) in grade II oligodendroglioma; nearly all cycling cells are SOX4-high; the stem/progenitor signature correlates with the cell-cycle signature in 69 bulk TCGA LGG oligodendrogliomas. PMID:27806376
Co-occurrence and mutual exclusivity
Therapeutic relevance
- SOX4-high stem/progenitor cells represent the proliferative apex of oligodendroglioma; no specific drugs are evaluated in this study.
Open questions
- Functional stemness was not validated by xenotransplantation; generalizability to other glioma subtypes is not established. PMID:27806376
Sources
This page was processed by entity-page-writer on 2026-04-15. - PMID:28988769
This page was processed by wiki-cli on 2026-05-15.