ADAM12 and cancer: In breast cancer, NFIX may interact with methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2), an important epigenetic regulator, to suppress Z-DNA-mediated transcriptional suppression, thus enabling the overexpression of ADAM-12, a prominently up-regulated, metastasis-promoting protein in many cancer types.[49] In esophageal cancers, the down-regulation of NFIX allows for microRNA miR-1290 to promote tumor proliferation, migration and metastasis [46].