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Prostate Cancer Cells: Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors Induce Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition

Posted in Bio Instrumentation in Experimental Life Sciences Research, Biological Networks, Gene Regulation and Evolution, BioSimilars, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Cell Biology, Signaling & Cell Circuits, Disease Biology, Small Molecules in Development of Therapeutic Drugs, Health Economics and Outcomes Research, Pharmaceutical Analytics, Stem Cells for Regenerative Medicine, tagged Aviva Lev-Ari, Biology, breast cancer, Cancer - General, cancer drug resistance, Cancer research, cancer stem cells, Cell Biology, Chemotherapy, Clinical trial, Conditions and Diseases, DNA, EMT, epithelial-mesenchymal, Epithelial-mesenchymal transition, gene, HDAC, health, Histone, Histone deacetylase, Histone deacetylase inhibitor, histone modification, medicine, metastasis, Prostate cancer, research, Squamous epithelial cell on November 30, 2012| 21 Comments »

Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors Induce Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition in Prostate Cancer Cells(1)

Word Cloud By Danielle Smolyar

Authors: Dejuan Kong, Aamir Ahmad, Bin Bao, Yiwei Li, Sanjeev Banarjee, Fazlul H. Sarkar, Wayne State University School of Medicine

Reporter-Curator: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.

Clinically, there has not been much success in treating solid tumors with histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi). Histone acetylation and deacetylation play an important role in transcriptional regulation of genes and increased activity is associated with many cancers, therefore it was thought that HDAC inhibition might be fruitful as a therapy. There have been several phase I and II clinical trials using HDACi for treatment of various malignancies, including hematological and solid malignancies(2), with most success seen in hematologic malignancies such as cutaneous T-cell lymphoma and peripheral T-cell lymphoma and little or no positive outcome with solid tumors. Many mechanisms of resistance to HDACi in solid tumors have been described, most of which are seen with other chemotherapeutics such as increased multidrug resistance gene MDR1, increased anti-apoptotic proteins and activation of cell survival pathways(3).

A report in PLOS One by Dr. Dejuan Kong, Dr. Fazlul Sarkar, and colleagues from Wayne State University School of Medicine, demonstrate another possible mechanism of resistance to HDACi in prostate cancer, by induction of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which has been associated with the development of resistance to chemotherapies in other malignancies of epithelial origin(4,5).

EMT is an important differentiation process in embryogenesis and felt to be important in progression of cancer. Epithelial cells will acquire a mesenchymal morphology (on plastic this looks like a cuboidal epithelial cell gaining a more flattened, elongated, tri-corner morphology; see paper Figure 1) and down-regulate epithelial markers such as cytokeratin, up-regulation of mesenchymal markers, increased migration and invasiveness in standard assays, and increased resistance to chemotherapeutics, and similarity to cancer stem cells(6-10).

Figure 1. HDACis led to the induction of EMT phemotype. (A and B) PC3 cells treated with TSA and SAHA for 24 h at indicated doses. The photomicrographs of PC3 cells treated with TSA and SAHA exhibited a fibroblastic-type phenotype, while cells treated with DMAO control displayed rounded epithelial cell morphology (original magnification, x 100). (C) Treated PC3 cells show increased mesenchymal markers vimentin and ZEB1 and F-actin reorganization. Figure taken from Kong, D., Ahmad, A., Bao, B., Li, Y., Banerjee, S., and Sarkar, F. H. (2012) PloS one 7, e45045

In this study the authors found that treatment of prostate carcinoma cells with two different HDACis (trichostatin A (TSA) and suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA)) induced EMT phenotype mediated through up-regulation of transcription factors ZEB1, ZEB2 and Slug, increased expression of mesenchymal markers vimentin, N-cadherin and fibronectin by promoting histone 3 acetylation on gene promoters. In addition TSA increased the stem cell markers Sox2 and Nanog with concomitant EMT morphology and increased cell motility.

Below is the abstract of this paper(1):

ABSTRACT

Clinical experience of histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACIs) in patients with solid tumors has been disappointing; however, the molecular mechanism of treatment failure is not known. Therefore, we sought to investigate the molecular mechanism of treatment failure of HDACIs in the present study. We found that HDACIs Trichostatin A (TSA) and Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) could induce epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) phenotype in prostate cancer (PCa) cells, which was associated with changes in cellular morphology consistent with increased expression of transcription factors ZEB1, ZEB2 and Slug, and mesenchymal markers such as vimentin, N-cadherin and Fibronectin. CHIP assay showed acetylation of histone 3 on proximal promoters of selected genes, which was in part responsible for increased expression of EMT markers. Moreover, TSA treatment led to further increase in the expression of Sox2 and Nanog in PCa cells with EMT phenotype, which was associated with cancer stem-like cell (CSLC) characteristics consistent with increased cell motility. Our results suggest that HDACIs alone would lead to tumor aggressiveness, and thus strategies for reverting EMT-phenotype to mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET) phenotype or the reversal of CSLC characteristics prior to the use of HDACIs would be beneficial to realize the value of HDACIs for the treatment of solid tumors especially PCa.

Highlights of the research include:

TSA and SAHA induce morphologic changes in prostate carcinoma LNCaP and PC3 cells related to EMT by microscopy as well as accumulation of mesenchymal markers ZEB1, vimentin, and F-actin reorganization shown by immunofluorescence microscopy and increased expression of these markers shown by real-time PCR
Western blotting showed TSA treatment resulted in hyperacetyulation of histone 3 whi8le CHIP analysis revealed increased histone 3 acetylation on the promoters of vimentin, ZEB2, Slug, and MMP2
Western analysis revealed that HDACi not only induced EMT but increased the expression of cancer stem cell markers associated with increased motility such as Sox2 and Nanog. Increased cell migration was measured by Transwell migration assays and increased cell motility was measured via cell detachment assays

1. Kong, D., Ahmad, A., Bao, B., Li, Y., Banerjee, S., and Sarkar, F. H. (2012) PloS one 7, e45045

2. Bertino, E. M., and Otterson, G. A. (2011) Expert opinion on investigational drugs 20, 1151-1158

3. Robey, R. W., Chakraborty, A. R., Basseville, A., Luchenko, V., Bahr, J., Zhan, Z., and Bates, S. E. (2011) Molecular pharmaceutics 8, 2021-2031

4. Wang, Z., Li, Y., Kong, D., Banerjee, S., Ahmad, A., Azmi, A. S., Ali, S., Abbruzzese, J. L., Gallick, G. E., and Sarkar, F. H. (2009) Cancer research 69, 2400-2407

5. Wang, Z., Li, Y., Ahmad, A., Azmi, A. S., Kong, D., Banerjee, S., and Sarkar, F. H. (2010) Drug resistance updates : reviews and commentaries in antimicrobial and anticancer chemotherapy 13, 109-118

6. Hugo, H., Ackland, M. L., Blick, T., Lawrence, M. G., Clements, J. A., Williams, E. D., and Thompson, E. W. (2007) Journal of cellular physiology 213, 374-383

7. Thiery, J. P. (2002) Nature reviews. Cancer 2, 442-454

8. Kong, D., Banerjee, S., Ahmad, A., Li, Y., Wang, Z., Sethi, S., and Sarkar, F. H. (2010) PloS one 5, e12445

9. Kong, D., Li, Y., Wang, Z., and Sarkar, F. H. (2011) Cancers 3, 716-729

10. Bao, B., Wang, Z., Ali, S., Kong, D., Li, Y., Ahmad, A., Banerjee, S., Azmi, A. S., Miele, L., and Sarkar, F. H. (2011) Cancer letters 307, 26-36