Pokemon Antibody / ZBTB7A

Zinc finger and BTB domain-containing protein 7A, also called Pokemon and FBI-1, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ZBTB7A gene. It has a critical oncosuppressive role in the prostate. Prostate-specific inactivation of ZBTB7A leads to a marked acceleration of PTEN loss-driven prostate tumorigenesis through bypass of PTEN loss-induced cellular senescence. It has been showed that ZBTB7A physically interacts with SOX9 and functionally antagonizes its transcriptional activity on key target genes such as MIA, which is involved in tumor cell invasion, and H19, a long noncoding RNA precursor for an RB-targeting microRNA. Inactivation of ZBTB7A in vivo leads to RB downregulation, bypass of PTEN loss-induced cellular senescence, and invasive prostate cancer. Notably, it has been also found that ZBTB7A is genetically lost, as well as downregulated at both the mRNA and protein levels, in a subset of human advanced prostate cancers. Therefore, ZBTB7A is identified as a context-dependent cancer gene that can act as an oncogene in some contexts but that also has oncosuppressive-like activity in PTEN-null tumors.