Psychological stress drives ovarian tumor metastasis through NR3C1 and NUPR1

This new article publication from Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B, discusses how a psychological stress-activated NR3C1/NUPR1 axis promotes ovarian tumor metastasis.

Ovarian tumor (OT) is the most lethal form of gynecologic malignancy, with minimal improvements in patient outcomes over the past several decades. Metastasis is the leading cause of ovarian cancer-related deaths, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.

Psychological stress is known to activate the glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1), a factor associated with poor prognosis in OT patients. However, the precise mechanisms linking NR3C1 signaling and metastasis have yet to be fully elucidated.

The authors of this article demonstrate that chronic restraint stress accelerates epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and metastasis in OT through an NR3C1-dependent mechanism involving nuclear protein 1 (NUPR1). Mechanistically, NR3C1 directly regulates the transcription of NUPR1, which in turn increases the expression of snail family transcriptional repressor 2 (SNAI2), a key driver of EMT. Clinically, elevated NR3C1 positively correlates with NUPR1 expression in OT patients, and both are positively associated with poorer prognosis.

Overall, this study identified the NR3C1/NUPR1 axis as a critical regulatory pathway in psychological stress-induced OT metastasis, suggesting a potential therapeutic target for intervention in OT metastasis.