Download Thesis
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Investigating breast cancer O-linked glycosylation changes and their immunotherapeutic potential Picco, Gianfranco Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 09. Oct. 2021 This electronic theses or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Title: Investigating breast cancer O-linked glycosylation changes and their immunotherapeutic potential Author: Gianfranco Picco The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ You are free to: Share: to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Investigating breast cancer O-linked glycosylation changes and their immunotherapeutic potential. PhD in Medicine, 2013, Gianfranco Picco. King’s College London 1 Abstract Changes that occur in malignant cells can take a variety of forms and include changes in cellular glycosylation. Aberrant glycosylation is considered to be a universal feature of malignant transformation and tumour progression. Mucins are major carriers of altered glycans in most carcinomas, and mainly belong to the MUC family, with MUC1 considered one of its most prestigious affiliates, as it is upregulated and aberrantly glycosylated in the majority of breast and many other adenocarcinomas. The large domain of the extracellular region of MUC1 is made up of tandemly repeated amino acids that form a scaffold for the attachment of the O- linked glycans. The aberrant glycosylation of MUC1 observed in breast cancer results in the expression of simple, unbranched sugars that are often sialylated and this is partly due to the upregulation of the sialyltransferase, ST3Gal-I. These consistent and conserved changes suggest that aberrant glycosylation is advantageous for the tumour, and data generated by this thesis suggest that indeed this is the case. Attention has been focused on MUC1 as a target molecule for the immunotherapy of cancer. To investigate specific MUC1 tumour-associated glycans, recombinant MUC1 glycoproteins carrying specific and defined O-linked glycans were purified from engineered CHO cells. The immune responses to these MUC1 glycoforms were analysed using wild-type and MUC1 transgenic mice. Different tumour-associated glycoforms elicited different immune responses, with MUC1 carrying the disaccharide known as T inducing a cellular response in MUC1 Tg mice, while the MUC1-ST glycoform was incapable of inducing an immune response in MUC1 Tg mice or even wild-type mice. To determine whether the changes in glycosylation, observed in breast carcinomas, confer an advantage to cancer cells, we generated transgenic mice over-expressing ST3Gal-I in the mammary gland and other epithelial tissues, and crossed these with mice that develop spontaneous mammary tumours. The tumours that developed from the ST3Gal-I mice appeared significantly earlier than the controls. Thus over- expression of ST3Gal-I in the mammary gland promotes tumorigenesis in this model, and the MUC1-ST glycoform formed by the action of ST3Gal-I on the T antigen is not immunogenic and may even inhibit an immune response. 2 Acknowledgements It is a pleasure to thank those who made this thesis possible, and dedicate it in memory of my late dad Ferruccio and mum Marcella. Listed below are some of the people who have helped in its conception and development. A special mention must be made for my supervisor, Professor Joy Burchell, who has been hugely supportive and patient, and Dr John Maher and Professor Joyce Taylor Papadimitriou for their guidance throughout this work. First Supervisor: Professor Joy Burchell Second Supervisor: Dr John Maher Dr Richard Beatson Dr Julia Coleman Dr Angela Barrett Dr Sylvain Julien Dr Rosalind Graham Professor Henrik Clausen Professor Gunnar Hansson Professor Sarah Pinder Professor Anne Dell Professor Inka Brockhausen Professor Paul Crocker Dr Scott Wilkie. Dr Marc Davies Laura Chiapero-Stanke Dr Sophie Burbridge Daisy Sproviero Deanna Bueti Steven Catchpole Debbie Hall Gursharn Hutchins Dr Ana Parente Pereira 3 Lucienne Cooper Sjoukje Van Der Stegen Janet MacDonald Most importantly my sponsor: Cancer Research UK. King’s College London. And last but not least: My family, wife Leanne, sons Marco and Luca and daughter Mia, who have been prepared to give up so much of our time for this work and without whose support this would never have happened. 4 Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………...2 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………….....3 Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………………...5 Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………………………11 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 General introduction……………………………………………………………………….15 1.2 Breast cancer………………………………………………………………………………..17 1.2.1 Current treatment of breast cancer……………………………………………...20 Radiotherapy……………………………………………………………………...21 Chemotherapy…………………………………………………………………….21 Endocrine therapy………………………………………………………………...22 Targeted therapy………………………………………………………………….22 Immunotherapy…………………………………………………………………...23 1.3 Glycosylation………………………………………………………………………………..24 1.3.1 Glycosylation of glycolipids………………………………………………………24 1.3.2 Glycosylation of proteoglycans…………………………………………………...26 1.3.3 N-linked glycosylation…………………………………………………………….27 1.3.4 O-linked glycosylation…………………………………………………………….28 O-linked GlcNAc………………………………………………………………….29 O-linked mannose…………………………………………………………………30 O-linked fucose……………………………………………………………………31 O-linked glucose…………………………………………………………………..32 O-linked galactose………………………………………………………………...33 Mucin-type O-linked glycoproteins...……………………………………………33 1.4 Mucins………………………………………………………………………………………35 1.4.1 Secreted mucins…………………………………………………………………...37 1.4.2 Membrane bound mucins………………………………………………………...37 1.4.3 MUC1……………………………………………………………………………...38 MUC1 protein structure………………………………………………………….39 Expression…………………………………………………………………………41 1.4.4 Signalling function of MUC1 and other membrane mucins……………………42 1.5 Aberrant glycosylation in cancer………………………………………………………….45 1.5.1 Aberrant glycosylation of MUC1 in breast cancer………………………………46 1.5.2 Impact of aberrant glycosylation on the function of glycan carrying molecules48 1.6 Mechanisms attributed to the altered O-glycan profils...………………………………..53 5 Changes in expression of glycosyltransferases………………………………….53 Changes in Golgi pH……………………………………………………………...56 Relocation of pGalNAc-Ts………………………………………………………..57 Mutation in the Cosmc gene……………………………………………………...57 1.7 Tumour immunology……………………………………………………………………….58 1.8 Immune evasion…………………………………………………………………………….60 1.9 Tumour microenvironment………………………………………………………………..61 1.10 MUC1 in immunotherapy………………………………………………………………….64 1.11 The known immunological effects to cancer associated MUC1 glycoforms……………65 MUC1-Tn………………………………………………………………………….65 MUC1-STn………………………………………………………………………...66 MUC1-T…………………………………………………………………………...66 MUC1-ST………………………………………………………………………….67 Undefined tumour-associated MUC1 glycoforms………………………………68 Chapter 2 Materials and methods Materials and methods used in chapter 3 2.1 Enterokinase cleavage of murine IgG2aFc domain…………………………….70 2.2 Anion exchange chromatography………………………………………………..70 2.3 Affinity chromatography (MUC1 without glycans and Tn)...............................71 2.4 Neuraminidase treatment of purified recombinant MUC1-ST………………..72 2.5 SDS-PAGE………………………………………………………………………...72 2.6 Silver