ERK1/2 Signaling Induces Upregulation of ANGPT2 and CXCR4 to Mediate Liver Metastasis in Colon Cancer
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Published OnlineFirst August 19, 2020; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-19-4028 CANCER RESEARCH | MOLECULAR CELL BIOLOGY ERK1/2 Signaling Induces Upregulation of ANGPT2 and CXCR4 to Mediate Liver Metastasis in Colon Cancer A C Jelena Urosevic1,2, María Teresa Blasco1,2, Alicia Llorente1, Anna Bellmunt1, Antoni Berenguer-Llergo3, Marc Guiu1, AdriaCa nellas~ 1,2, Esther Fernandez1, Ivan Burkov1, Maria Clapes 1, Mireia Cartana1, Cristina Figueras-Puig1, Eduard Batlle1,2,4, Angel R. Nebreda1,4, and Roger R. Gomis1,2,4,5 ABSTRACT ◥ Carcinoma development in colorectal cancer is driven by genetic cell lines and then tested in clinical samples. The RAS–ERK1/2 axis alterations in numerous signaling pathways. Alterations in the RAS- controlled expression of the cytokine ANGPT2 and the cytokine ERK1/2 pathway are associated with the shortest overall survival for receptor CXCR4 in colorectal cancer cells, which facilitated devel- patients after diagnosis of colorectal cancer metastatic disease, yet opment of liver but not lung metastases, suggesting that ANGPT2 how RAS–ERK signaling regulates colorectal cancer metastasis and CXCR4 are important for metastatic outgrowth in the liver. remains unknown. In this study, we used an unbiased screening CXCR4 controlled the expression of cytokines IL10 and CXCL1, approach based on selection of highly liver metastatic colorectal providing evidence for a causal role of IL10 in supporting liver cancer cells in vivo to determine genes associated with metastasis. colonization. In summary, these studies demonstrate that amplifi- From this, an ERK1/2-controlled metastatic gene set (EMGS) was cation of ERK1/2 signaling in KRAS-mutated colorectal cancer cells defined. EMGS was associated with increased recurrence and affects the cytokine milieu of the tumors, possibly affecting tumor– reduced survival in patients with colorectal cancer tumors. Higher stroma interactions and favoring liver metastasis formation. levels of EMGS expression were detected in the colorectal cancer subsets consensus molecular subtype (CMS)1 and CMS4. ANGPT2 Significance: These findings identify amplified ERK1/2 signaling and CXCR4, two genes within the EMGS, were subjected to gain-of- in KRAS-mutated colorectal cancer cells as a driver of tumor– function and loss-of-function studies in several colorectal cancer stroma interactions that favor formation of metastases in the liver. Introduction However, recent clinical data emphasize the importance of MAPK signaling not only in primary colorectal cancer development Progression from normal mucosa to carcinoma in colorectal but also in distant tissue colonization (6). OS after diagnosis of cancer is driven by a sequential order of well-defined genetic metastatic disease is shortest for patients with tumors that present alterations that affect the Wnt, MAPK, PI3K, and TGFb signaling alterations in the RAS pathway (7). In addition, having mutations in pathways (1). Alterations in MAPK signaling occur early during KRAS is associated with a higher risk of recurrence in patients after primary colorectal cancer development (1). Activating mutations in surgical resection of liver metastases from colorectal cancer (8–10). KRAS, NRAS,andBRAF, which are part of the RAS-ERK1/2 MAPK The presence of mutations in both KRAS and BRAF genes can signaling cascade, are detected in nearly 50% of colorectal cancer influence the metastatic pattern of colorectal cancer, as patients cases (2–4). In addition, genetic variations in several members of with colorectal cancer who have a KRAS-mutant tumors have as MAPK signaling pathways are associated with the risk of developing well an increased risk of lung recurrence after primary tumor colorectal cancer, as well as with overall survival (OS) after diag- resection (11), whereas those with a BRAF mutations tend to nosis with colorectal cancer (5). develop metastasis to peritoneum and distant lymph nodes (12). Extensive genomic profiling has detected a high level of concor- dance in mutational status between colorectal cancer primary 1Cancer Science Program, Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), tumors and matched metastases (7, 13, 14), thus suggesting that The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain. 2CIBER- metastatic development is not driven by the acquisition of addi- ONC, Spain. 3Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Unit, Institute for Research in tional mutational events. How RAS–ERK signaling regulates colo- Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technol- rectal cancer metastasis, and how it determines metastatic patterns 4 ogy, Barcelona, Spain. ICREA, Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats,¸ is still unknown. Barcelona, Spain. 5School of Medicine, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. Note: Supplementary data for this article are available at Cancer Research Materials and Methods Online (http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/). Cell culture J. Urosevic, M.T, Blasco, A. Llorente, and A. Bellmunt contributed equally to the article. The colorectal cancer cell lines were maintained in 5% CO2 at 37 C in DMEM (Gibco) supplemented with glutamine (0.29 mg/mL), Corresponding Author: Roger R. Gomis, Institute for Research in Biomedicine, penicillin (100 U/mL), streptomycin (0.1 mg/mL), and either 5% FBS Baldiri i Reixac 10, Barcelona 08028, Spain. Phone: 349-3403-9959, Fax: 349- 3403-9960; E-mail: [email protected] (for the cell lines SW620-P and SW620-LiM2 derivatives from SW620, SW480, and Colo26) or 10% FBS (for the HCT116 cell line); all Cancer Res 2020;80:4668–80 supplements were purchased from Biological Industries. All cell lines doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-19-4028 were purchased from the ATCC but Colo26 was gift from the Batlle lab. Ó2020 American Association for Cancer Research. All cell lines were authenticated for KRAS/BRAF mutations and tested AACRJournals.org | 4668 Downloaded from cancerres.aacrjournals.org on September 30, 2021. © 2020 American Association for Cancer Research. Published OnlineFirst August 19, 2020; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-19-4028 ERK1/2 Signaling Mediates Liver Metastasis routinely (biweekly) for Mycoplasma by PCR. Cell lines were not Microarray processing of data from cell lines passaged more than 50 times. Microarray samples from SW620 cell lines were processed using packages oligo from R and Bioconductor. Raw cell files were normal- Inhibitor treatment ized using RMA background correction and summarization at the core Cells (2.5 Â 106) were seeded and treated for 24 hours with the transcript level. Chip probesets were annotated using the information MEK1/2 inhibitors U0126 (10 mmol/L, Cell Signaling Technology) or provided by Affymetrix (details and references in the Supplementary PD0325901 (100 nmol/L, Tocris) in DMEM supplemented with 0.1% Materials and Methods). of FBS. Enrichment analysis of cell line data Lentiviral production ERK1/2-controlled metastatic gene set (EMGS) genes were evalu- 293T cells were used for lentiviral production. Lentiviral vectors ated for pathway enrichment using a hypergeometric test. Gene sets expressing short hairpin (shRNA) against human CXCR4, derived from the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) ANGPT2, ETV4, or ETV5 from Mission shRNA Library were pathway database as collected in R packages KEGG.db and org.Hs. purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (see sequences in Supplementary eg.db. were used for these analyses. P values obtained from the Material and Methods). hypergeometric test were corrected by multiple comparisons using the Benjamini–Hochberg FDR method (details and references in the Retroviral production Supplementary Materials and Methods). Retroviruses were produced using 293T cells as described previously (15). Transcriptome datasets of whole tumor samples Transcriptome analyses in human colorectal cancer tumors were Animal studies carried out on 1,485 samples that were available in two public The Ethical Committee of Animal Experimentation of the Gov- repositories listed in the Supplementary Materials. Microarray samples ernment of Catalonia approved all animal work (protocol number were processed separately for each dataset using packages affy and 9317). Intrasplenic injections were done as previously reported, and affyPLM from Bioconductor. Raw cel files were normalized using liver metastasis development was followed twice a week by biolumi- RMA background correction and summarization. Standard quality nescence imaging using the IVIS-200 imaging system from Xenogen controls were performed in order to identify abnormal samples. (Living Image 2.60.1 software; ref. 15). Treatment with IL10 antibody Microarray intensities were corrected separately by metrics PM.IQR, or IgG was initiated 7 days postimplantation of the cells and mice were RMA.IQR, and RNA.DEG as described previously. TCGA RNA-seq treated three times per week with 1.5 mg of antibody. For the exper- expression data were downloaded and processed as detailed in the iment using mouse colorectal cancer organoids, treatment with IL10 Supplementary Material (details and references in the Supplementary antibody or IgG was initiated 3 days after implantation of the cells and Materials and Methods). mice were treated three times per week with 5 mg of antibody. Molecular annotation of tumor samples Western blot analysis When not available in the clinical info, microsatellite instability Protein extracts obtained from whole cell lysates (40 mg) were (MSI) status was imputed in each dataset separately based on the fractionated in SDS-PAGE gels,