Early growth response 1 (EGR1) is a zinc-finger transcription factor that is also known as Zif268, NGFI-A, Krox24, and TIS8. As a transcriptional regulator, EGR1 plays an important role in the regulation of cell physiology affecting growth, differentiation and survival. EGR1 is ubiquitously expressed in human tissues and can be rapidly induced by a great variety of environmental signals, such as growth factors, shear stress, reactive oxygen species and cytokines (Cao et al., 1992; Sadoshima et al., 1992; Nose and Ohba, 1996; Mayer et al., 2009). Induction of EGR1 can be mediated by several signaling pathways, including PKA and the MAP kinases ERK1/2, JNK and p38 (Pagel and Deindl, 2011). EGR1 in turn recognizes and binds to the DNA consensus sequence GCG(G/T)GGGCG (Swirnoff and Milbrandt, 1995). Thereby, EGR1 can regulate the transcription of many different genes with diverse functions, including cell cycle regulatory proteins, extracellular matrix proteins, transcriptional regulatory proteins, cytokines and growth factors (Krämer et al., 1994; Skerka et al., 1995; Svaren et al., 2000; Fu et al., 2003; Hoffmann et al., 2008; Kerpedjieva et al., 2012). Anomalies in the expression of EGR1 have been implicated in various tissue pathophysiologies, such as carcinogenesis, inflammation and ischemic injury (Pawlinski et al., 2003; Baron et al., 2006; Yang et al., 2015).