Apoptotic Sensitivity of Colon Cancer Cells to Histone Deacetylase
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Published OnlineFirst January 12, 2010; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-09-2327 Therapeutics, Targets, and Chemical Biology Cancer Research Apoptotic Sensitivity of Colon Cancer Cells to Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors Is Mediated by an Sp1/Sp3-Activated Transcriptional Program Involving Immediate-Early Gene Induction Andrew J. Wilson1, Anderly C. Chueh2, Lars Tögel2, Georgia A. Corner1, Naseem Ahmed1, Sanjay Goel1, Do-Sun Byun1, Shannon Nasser1, Michele A. Houston1, Minaxi Jhawer1, Helena J.M. Smartt1, Lucas B. Murray1, Courtney Nicholas1, Barbara G. Heerdt1, Diego Arango3, Leonard H. Augenlicht1, and John M. Mariadason1,2 Abstract Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) induce growth arrest and apoptosis in colon cancer cells and are being considered for colon cancer therapy. The underlying mechanism of action of these effects is poorly defined with both transcription-dependent and -independent mechanisms implicated. We screened a panel of 30 colon cancer cell lines for sensitivity to HDACi-induced apoptosis and correlated the differences with gene expression patterns induced by HDACi in the five most sensitive and resistant lines. A robust and reproducible transcriptional response involving coordinate induction of multiple immediate-early (fos, jun, egr1, egr3, atf3, arc, nr4a1) and stress response genes (Ndrg4, Mt1B, Mt1E, Mt1F, Mt1H) was selectively in- duced in HDACi sensitive cells. Notably, a significant percentage of these genes were basally repressed in colon tumors. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that the promoter regions of the HDACi-induced genes were enriched for KLF4/Sp1/Sp3 transcription factor binding sites. Altering KLF4 levels failed to modulate ap- optosis or transcriptional responses to HDACi treatment. In contrast, HDACi preferentially stimulated the activity of Spl/Sp3 and blocking their action attenuated both the transcriptional and apoptotic responses to HDACi treatment. Our findings link HDACi-induced apoptosis to activation of a Spl/Sp3-mediated response that involves derepression of a transcriptional network basally repressed in colon cancer. Cancer Res; 70(2); 609–20. ©2010 AACR. Introduction mechanisms. First, inhibition of HDAC activity results in hy- peracetylation of DNA-bound histones, generating a chroma- Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) are a class of tar- tin environment more permissive to transcriptional geted therapeutics with promising antitumor efficacy in mul- activation (2, 3). Second, HDACi induce hyperacetylation of sequence-specific transcription factors (4–8), which can ei- tiple malignancies. HDACi inhibit the HDAC family of ther increase or decrease transcriptional activity (8, 9). transcriptional corepressors, which catalyze the deacetyla- Multiple structurally distinct HDACi have been described, tion of lysine residues within target proteins (1). HDACi including short-chain fatty acids (butyrate, valproic acid), hy- treatment likely regulates gene expression by at least two droxamic acids (trichostatin A, SAHA), cyclic tetrapeptides, tetrapeptides, and benzamidines (2). Of these, SAHA is ap- proved for the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, Authors' Affiliations: 1Department of Oncology, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York; 2Ludwig whereas several others are in phase I and phase II clinical Institute for Cancer Research, Melbourne, Australia; and 3Molecular trials. These HDACi primarily inhibit the class I (HDACs 1, Biology and Biochemistry Research Center, Barcelona, Spain 2, 3 and 8) and class II HDACs (HDACs 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10; Note: Supplementary data for this article are available at Cancer Re- ref. 2). search Online (http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/). HDACi induce growth arrest, differentiation, and apoptosis Current address for J.M. Mariadason: Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Melbourne Centre for Clinical Sciences Austin Health, Level in a variety of tumor cell lines, including colon cancer cells 7, Harold Stokes Building, 145-163 Studley Road, Heidelberg, Victoria (2). Depending on the cell type, HDACi-induced apoptosis 3084, Australia. can be mediated by both the intrinsic/mitochondrial (10) Corresponding Author: John M. Mariadason, Ludwig Institute for Can- or extrinsic/death receptor pathways (11, 12). In colon cancer cer Research, Melbourne Centre for Clinical Sciences Austin Health, Level 7, Harold Stokes Building, 145-163 Studley Road, Heidelberg, cells, most studies implicate the intrinsic pathway, with a se- Victoria 3084, Australia. Phone: 613-9496-3068; Fax: 613-9496-5334; quential series of events including loss of mitochondrial E-mail: [email protected]. membrane potential, mitochondrial Bax localization, cyto- doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-09-2327 chrome c release, and caspase-9 activation observed upon ©2010 American Association for Cancer Research. HDACi treatment (12–14). However, HDACi have also been www.aacrjournals.org 609 Downloaded from cancerres.aacrjournals.org on September 28, 2021. © 2010 American Association for Cancer Research. Published OnlineFirst January 12, 2010; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-09-2327 Wilson et al. shown to sensitize colon cancer cells to TRAIL and Fas ligand– hybridized to 27,000 feature cDNA microarrays generated induced apoptosis (15, 16), suggesting activation of the by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine microarray facility two pathways may occur in parallel. (30), and images were analyzed using Genepix Pro software Whereas the downstream effectors of HDACi-induced ap- (Axon Instruments, Union City, CA) and Lowess normalized. optosis have been studied in detail (17, 18), the molecular For each cell line, two independent butyrate treatment ex- events that initiate the process are less well defined. One pos- periments were performed, and the mean fold change in ex- tulated transcription-dependent mechanism is alteration in pression following butyrate treatment relative to control was the balance in expression of proapoptotic and antiapoptotic computed for each sequence. Microarray experiments using genes in favor of apoptosis (2). For example, in colon cancer the Nimblegen platform are described in Supplementary cells HDACi upregulate expression of the proapoptotic genes, Methods. Bax (19) and Bak (20), and downregulate expression of the To identify genes differentially regulated (induced or re- antiapoptotic Bcl-XL gene (13). pressed) in response to HDACi treatment in sensitive and re- Alternatively, HDACi can initiate apoptosis via transcrip- sistant cell lines, the mean fold change in expression tion-independent mechanisms (21). For example, HDACi (butyrate relative to control) across the five sensitive and five can promote apoptosis via hyperacetylation of HSP90 and resistant lines was computed for each gene. Differentially ex- subsequent depletion of prosurvival HSP90 client proteins pressed genes were selected upon their ability to satisfy each (22, 23). HDACi-induced apoptosis has also been linked to of the following three criteria: (1) changed 2-fold or greater aberrant mitosis (22, 24–27). relative to control in either the sensitive or resistant panel; Therefore, whether HDACi-induced apoptosis is initiated (2) differentially regulated by a factor of 1.5-fold or greater primarily in a transcription-dependent or -independent between sensitive and resistant cells; (3) significantly differ- manner is currently unclear. In the present study we iden- entially regulated between sensitive and resistant cells by an tify a robust and reproducible transcriptional response se- unpaired t test, with a P value of <0.05 considered statistically lectively induced by HDACi in sensitive cell lines involving significant. the induction and repression of 48 and 44 genes respective- To identify genes not changed in response to butyrate ly. The induced genes were highly enriched for immediate- treatment, we first identified all genes for which the median early (IE) and stress response (SR) genes. We show that fold induction in response to butyrate treatment was <10% this transcriptional response and subsequent apoptosis (within the range of +1.1 to −1.1), for both the sensitive are coordinately induced by HDACi in a Sp1/Sp3-depen- and resistant panel. From this list we then selected genes dent manner. Notably, a significant percentage of the HDA- that were also not significantly differentially expressed be- Ci-induced genes are basally repressed in colon tumors, tween sensitive and resistant lines (P value resulting from a suggesting HDACi-induced apoptosis involves deregulation t test between sensitive and resistant is >0.05). Clones (2,751) of a complex transcriptional network basally repressed in that meet the above criteria were identified. From these, a colon cancer cells. random number generator was used to select 48 genes that were used for comparative analyses with the HDACi-induced gene list. Materials and Methods Promoter analysis. Promoter sequences for the 48 HDA- Ci-inducedgenesaswellasanequalnumberofcontrol Cell lines and cell culture. The 30 colon carcinoma cell genes not changed by HDACi were obtained from the Uni- lines used were Caco-2, Colo201, Colo205, Colo320, Dld-1, versity of California Santa Cruz genome browser.4 The pro- HCT116, HCT-15, HCT-8, HT29, LoVo, LS174T, RKO, SK- moter region encompassing 1.5 kb upstream of the CO-1, SW1116, SW403, SW48, SW480, SW620, SW837, transcription start site (TSS) through 200 bp downstream SW948, T84, WiDr, HT29-Cl.16E, HT29-Cl.19A, LIM1215, was systematically searched for the presence of transcrip-