SOX17 [3.5CH]

SRY-related high mobility group box (SOX) proteins comprise a large family of widely conserved transcription factors that play important roles in development. 30 SOX genes have been identified. SOX17 plays essential roles in endoderm specification and the maintenance of the hematopoietic stem cell pool and for vascular morphogenesis during development. SOX17 expresses in fallopian tube epithelium, endometrial glands, endocervical glandular epithelium, testis (germ cell precursors of spermatocytes), and vascular endothelial cells. It does not express in bladder, brain, breast, colon, heart, kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, prostate, skin, spleen, small intestine, stomach, thyroid, tonsil. Similar to PAX8, SOX17 is an ovarian cancer master transcription factor. More studies show that Studies identified that SOX17 is a sensitive and specific marker for ovarian nonmucinous carcinomas and endometrial carcinomas. Furthermore, SOX17 positive expression in endothelial cells makes it an internal positive marker. However, unlike PAX8, SOX17 is predominately negative in other tumor types, including kidney and thyroid tumors, thus differentiates it from PAX8.