Whole Transcriptome Sequencing Reveals Extensive Unspliced Mrna in Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer Adam G
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Published OnlineFirst September 4, 2014; DOI: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-14-0273 Chromatin, Gene, and RNA Regulation Molecular Cancer Research Whole Transcriptome Sequencing Reveals Extensive Unspliced mRNA in Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer Adam G. Sowalsky1, Zheng Xia2, Liguo Wang2, Hao Zhao2, Shaoyong Chen1, Glenn J. Bubley1, Steven P. Balk1, and Wei Li2 Abstract Men with metastatic prostate cancer who are treated with be the result of incomplete splicing at canonical splice junctions. androgen deprivation therapies (ADT) usually relapse within 2 Using quantitative PCR (qPCR), a series of genes (AR, KLK2, to 3 years with disease that is termed castration-resistant prostate KLK3, STEAP2, CPSF6, and CDK19) were confirmed to have a cancer (CRPC). To identify the mechanism that drives these greater proportion of unspliced RNA in CRPC specimens than in advanced tumors, paired-end RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) was normal prostate epithelium, untreated primary prostate cancer, performed on a panel of CRPC bone marrow biopsy specimens. and cultured prostate cancer cells. This inefficient coupling of From this genome-wide approach, mutations were found in a transcription and mRNA splicing suggests an overall increase in series of genes with prostate cancer relevance, including AR, transcription or defect in splicing. NCOR1, KDM3A, KDM4A, CHD1, SETD5, SETD7, INPP4B, RASGRP3, RASA1, TP53BP1, and CDH1, and a novel SND1:BRAF Implications: Inefficient splicing in advanced prostate can- gene fusion. Among the most highly expressed transcripts were 10 cer provides a selective advantage through effects on microRNA noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), including MALAT1 and PABPC1, networks but may render tumors vulnerable to agents that which are involved in RNA processing. Notably, a high percentage suppress rate-limiting steps in splicing. Mol Cancer Res; 13(1); of sequence reads mapped to introns, which were determined to 98–106. Ó2014 AACR. Introduction androgen receptor (AR) is substantially reactivated in a large proportion of these relapsed tumors through increased intratu- With more than 230,000 new patients and nearly 30,000 moral androgen synthesis, in conjunction with other mechanisms deaths annually, prostate cancer is the second most common that may enhance AR expression and activity, and many of these cause of cancer-related deaths in men in the United States (1). tumors will respond to agents that further suppress androgen Although greater than 75% of patients with early-stage prostate synthesis (CYP17A1 inhibitors such as abiraterone) or new AR cancer can be cured with surgical and/or radiation treatment, the antagonists (such as enzalutamide). Unfortunately, these men remainder ultimately recur with metastatic disease. Androgen generally relapse within 1 to 2 years, and increasing serum PSA deprivation therapy (surgical castration or the administration of in most cases suggests that AR is again active in these resistant luteinizing hormone–releasing hormone agonists) is the standard tumors. treatment for metastatic prostate cancer (2), but most tumors We reported previously on an analysis of gene expression in eventually relapse despite castrate androgen levels (castration- CRPC bone marrow metastases using Affymetrix oligonucleotide resistant prostate cancer, CRPC). It has now become clear that microarrays and immunohistochemistry, which showed increased expression of enzymes mediating androgen synthesis 1Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Medicine, Beth and alterations in the expression of additional genes linked to Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, tumor progression (3). We hypothesize that additional mechan- Massachusetts. 2Division of Biostatistics, Dan L Duncan Cancer Center isms mediating progression to CRPC will also contribute to tumor and Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of progression after treatment with new hormonal agents including Medicine, Houston, Texas. abiraterone and enzalutamide. Therefore, in this study, we have Note: Supplementary data for this article are available at Molecular Cancer used paired-end RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) to assess more com- Research Online (http://mcr.aacrjournals.org/). prehensively the transcriptome of 8 CRPC bone marrow metas- A.G. Sowalsky and Z. Xia contributed equally to this article. tases that had been examined previously on Affymetrix U133A Corresponding Authors: Steven P. Balk, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, microarrays. 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. Phone: 617-735-2065; Fax: 1-617-735- 2050; E-mail: [email protected]; and Wei Li, Baylor College of Medicine, 1 Baylor Plaza, Mail Stop BCM305, Cullen Building, Suite 529D, Houston, TX Materials and Methods 77030. Phone: 713-798-7854; E-mail: [email protected] Tissue samples doi: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-14-0273 All tissue samples in this study were obtained with consent Ó2014 American Association for Cancer Research. from patients with prostate cancer in compliance with the Beth 98 Mol Cancer Res; 13(1) January 2015 Downloaded from mcr.aacrjournals.org on September 25, 2021. © 2015 American Association for Cancer Research. Published OnlineFirst September 4, 2014; DOI: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-14-0273 Extensive Unspliced RNA in Advanced Prostate Cancer Israel Deaconess Medical Center Institutional Review Board. Results CRPC biopsies were obtained from the posterior iliac crest and RNA-seq gene expression analysis is concordant with previous snap frozen as previously described (3–5). Frozen sections stained microarray analysis with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) were examined histologically We had previously analyzed on Affymetrix U133A microarrays and four to six 6-mm ribbons with >90% tumor and minimal bone a panel of 33 CRPC bone marrow biopsies in comparison with a marrow elements were treated with TRIzol (Invitrogen) for puri- series of primary prostate cancer (3). However, the additional fication of total RNA. information that can be gained by paired-end RNA-seq led us to To obtain nonneoplastic prostate epithelium, we examined re-analyze a subset of these CRPC samples, which were selected on snap-frozen samples from radical prostatectomies in patients the basis of very low contaminating hematopoietic or stromal cell with low volume prostate cancer and collected sections with content (>90% tumor by H&E) and availability of adequate RNA. 20% to 80% normal prostate epithelium and no evident For each of the 8 samples selected, 50 ng of total RNA was tumor on histology. DNase-treated RNA was extracted from amplified into double-stranded cDNA and Illumina paired-end ten 6-mm ribbons using the RNeasy Plus Micro Kit (Qiagen). adaptors were ligated onto the library for 76 cycles of paired-end To obtain primary prostate cancer, samples from radical sequencing (samples 49 and 66) or 101 cycles of paired-end prostatectomies were fixed in PaxGene (Qiagen), processed sequencing (samples 24, 28, 39, 55, 71, and 74; see Supplemen- into paraffin, and sectioned at 5 mm onto Arcturus polyeth- tary Methods). ylene naphthalate metal-framed slides (Molecular Machines Although RNA from the previously analyzed primary prostate & Industries). Approximately 50,000 cells in Gleason pattern cancer was not available, we were still interested in whether gene 3and4glandsidentified by a board-certified pathologist expression data from the RNA-seq and the previous Affymetrix were captured onto caps using 20-mm infrared pulses and U133A microarrays were consistent. Therefore, we re-analyzed the excised from the adjacent tissue using the ultraviolet laser on Affymetrix raw data to perform a transcript-level normalization an ArcturusXT Nikon Eclipse Ti-E microdissection system. and performed a correlation analysis between the intensity values DNase-treated RNA was extracted using the PaxGene Tissue of these arrays with the RPKM from our RNA-seq data (see RNA Kit (Qiagen). Supplementary Methods). Considering approximately 13,000 transcripts (Supplementary Table S1), our analysis showed a Library preparation and data analysis statistically significant, positive correlation between gene expres- Fifty nanograms of RNA from CRPC samples was prepared for sion values measured from the same CRPC sample on both Illumina paired-end sequencing using the Ovation RNA-Seq platforms (Supplementary Fig. S1). Our observation of r values System (NuGEN), and FastQ files were aligned to the human less than 0.7 may be attributed to the 3-prime bias intrinsic in the genome (version Hg19). Complete descriptions of library prep- U133A microarray, whereas our random priming, whole tran- aration methods and sequencing data analysis are provided as scriptomic RNA-seq approach resulted in consistent coverage Supplementary Material. across transcripts (8) and better detection of low-abundance transcripts (9). Spearman r values increased when only the last Cell lines exon RPKM was used for correlation analysis (data not shown). VCaP and LNCaP cells were obtained from ATCC and pas- Nonetheless, this result indicated that gene expression values were saged for fewer than 6 months after receipt. VCS2 (6) and C4-2 not platform-dependent and supported our previous conclusions (7) cells were derived from VCaP and LNCaP cells, respectively. regarding gene expression differences between the primary pros- Subconfluent cultures of VCaP, LNCaP, VCS2, and C4-2 cells tate cancer and CRPC samples (3). grown in the presence of androgen (5%–10% FBS) were used as a source of control RNA. Cell lines' identities were routinely