The incidence of thyroid carcinoma (TC) has exhibited a rapid increase in recent years. A proportion of TCs exhibit aggressive behavior. The present study aimed to investigate the potential role of hypoxia‑hypoxia inducible factor 1 subunit α (HIF‑1α)‑periostin axis in the progression of TC. The upregulation of periostin and HIF‑1α expression levels was detected in 95 clinical TC tissues as compared with normal thyroid tissues. Hypoxia promoted the viability and invasion of TC cells and this effect was inhibited by the downregulation of periostin. Hypoxia also induced the Warburg effect in TC and this effect was inhibited by the silencing of periostin. Further investigations revealed that hypoxia activated HIF‑1α, which in turn regulated the expression of periostin. Immunoprecipitation and dual luciferase reporter assays demonstrated that HIF‑1α upregulated the expression of periostin by binding to the promoter of periostin. On the whole, these findings suggest the existence of a hypoxia‑HIF‑1α‑periostin axis in TC and indicate the role of this axis in the progression of TC.
Keywords: Warburg effect; hypoxia; hypoxia inducible factor 1 subunit alpha; periostin; thyroid cancer.