ORIGINAL ARTICLE Silencing of ZRF1 impedes survival of estrogen receptor positive MCF-7 cells and potentiates the effect of curcumin Sandip Kumar Rath 1 & Moonmoon Deb 1,2 & Dipta Sengupta 1 & Vijayalaxmi Kari 3 & Swayamsiddha Kar 1 & Sabnam Parbin 1 & Nibedita Pradhan 1 & Samir Kumar Patra 1 Received: 24 February 2016 /Accepted: 9 June 2016 # International Society of Oncology and BioMarkers (ISOBM) 2016 Abstract The role and clinical implication of ZRF1 in breast cancer are poorly understood. So this study is aimed to explore the role of ZRF1 in breast cancer progression. With this con- text, we first assessed its expression pattern in FFPE primary and metastasis breast tissue samples as well as from publicly available databases. Moreover, we also explored the survival status of patients from the publicly available database and interestingly discover that high expression of ZRF1 decreases the survival of estrogen-positive breast cancer patients more than estrogen-negative status patients. In the perspective of this, we evaluated the role ZRF1 in MCF-7 breast cancer cells and found that it’ s silencing by knockdown results in de- creased cell proliferation as well as cell viability. Results also show that expression of ZRF1 is down regulated in the pres- ence of estrogen-depleted conditions but independent of RAS/ MEK as well as AKT axes. Moreover, the decrease in viability of MCF-7 cells was accompanied by induction of apoptosis and DNA damage, well-marked with upregulation of cleaved PARP and downregulation of BCL2 and H2AUbK119 levels. Furthermore, we also explored that knockdown of ZRF1 sen- sitises the effect of curcumin, observed with decrease in cell viability and dropping of IC50 value from 25 to 15 μM. This investigation thus shed a new light on the role on ZRF1 in breast cancer cells and hence can be exploited to design better therapeutic intervention. Keywords ZRF1 . Estrogen receptor . BCL2 . PARP . Curcumin . RAS/MEK signalling, H2AUbK119 Abbreviations AKT Protein kinase B BCL2 B-cell lymphoma2 ER α Estrogen receptor alpha FACT Facilitates chromatin transcription FC Fold change GEO Gene expression omnibus H2AUbK119 Histone H2A ubiquitylated at lysine 119 position HDACs Histone deacetylases HR Hazard ratio HSP Heat shock proteins MEK Mitogen-activated protein kinase MLL Mixed-lineage leukaemia PARP Poly ADP ribose polymerase RA Retinoic acid RAR α Retinoic acid receptor alpha RAS Rous sarcoma SANT Swi3, Ada2, N-Cor and TFIIIB UBD Ubiquitin-binding domain ZRF1 Zuotin-related factor 1 (alias name DNAJC2) Introduction Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in women [1, 2]. Notably, it is quite evident from clin- ical as well as in vitro studies that epigenetic modulations of * Samir Kumar Patra samirp@nitrkl.ac.in; skpatra_99@yahoo.com 1 Epigenetics and Cancer Research Laboratory, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Group, Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha 769008, India 2 Present address: Cell Signalling Group, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford, Old Road Campus Research Building, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7DQ, UK 3 Department of General, Visceral and Pediatric Surgery, University Medical Center, 37075 Göttingen, Germany Tumor Biol. DOI 10.1007/s13277-016-5114-y