Multiple roles and mechanisms of MUC6 in cancer, especially digestive tumors

Hong Cai ^1* Wenhao Li ¹ Ruhui Yang ²

• ¹ Ganzhou People's Hospital, Ganzhou, China
• ² Second Clinical Medical College, Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China

MUC6, expressed mainly in the gastrointestinal tract, is a member of the mucin family, consisting of a core protein backbone and complex glycosylation modifications, serving critical roles in maintaining the integrity of the epithelial barrier. Many studies have demonstrated that glycosylation of MUC6 exerts unique roles in influencing cancer development, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, especially in gastrointestinal tumors such as gastric, pancreatic and colorectal cancers. In this paper, we have collected all the available literature and reviewed the major roles of MUC6 in common cancer. For example, loss of MUC6 often predicts gastric cancer. Elevated MUC6, in turn, can be an important indicator for prostate cancer biopsy, which helps to effectively screen for prostate cancer. Meanwhile, the discovery of MUC6-TN opens up a new direction for cancer treatment. In addition, the unique tandem repeat sequence variation of MUC6 suggests the possibility of predicting cancer susceptibility through its allele length variation. These findings suggest an important role for MUC6 in clinical practice and mechanism exploration. MUC6 could be used as a novel clinical indicator to assess the stage and prognosis of various cancers, but larger multicenter studies are needed to further validate its feasibility. Finally, we summarize the available information and discuss the future research directions of MUC6 in tumor therapeutic applications.