Dysregulation of Spliceosome Gene Expression in Advanced Prostate Cancer by RNA-Binding Protein PSF
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Dysregulation of spliceosome gene expression in advanced prostate cancer by RNA-binding protein PSF Ken-ichi Takayamaa, Takashi Suzukib, Tetsuya Fujimurac, Yuta Yamadac, Satoru Takahashid, Yukio Hommac, Yutaka Suzukie, and Satoshi Inouea,f,1 aDepartment of Functional Biogerontology, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo 173-0015, Japan; bDepartment of Pathology and Histotechnology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Miyagi 980-8575, Japan; cDepartment of Urology, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan; dDepartment of Urology, Nihon University School of Medicine, Tokyo 173-0032, Japan; eDepartment of Medical Genome Sciences, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Chiba 277-8652, Japan; and fDivision of Gene Regulation and Signal Transduction, Research Center for Genomic Medicine, Saitama Medical University, Saitama 350-1241, Japan Edited by Hsing-Jien Kung, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan, and accepted by Editorial Board Member Peter K. Vogt July 26, 2017 (received for review April 13, 2017) Developing therapeutic approaches are necessary for treating PSF is a ubiquitous nuclear protein essential for neural de- hormone-refractory prostate cancer. Activation of androgen re- velopment by regulating axon viability (12, 13). PSF has a unique ceptor (AR) and its variants’ expression along with the down- structure possessing both DNA- and RNA-binding domains, stream signals are mostly important for disease progression. implicated in transcription and nuclear RNA processing (14–16). However, the mechanism for marked increases of AR signals and However, the transcriptional and posttranscriptional specific its expression is still unclear. Here, we revealed that various spli- targets and the clinical significance of these proteins in prostate ceosome genes are aberrantly induced by RNA-binding protein cancer progression still remain to be elucidated. Here, we con- PSF, leading to enhancement of the splicing activities for AR ex- ducted global systematic analyses to determine both transcrip- pression. Our high-speed sequence analyses identified global PSF- tional targets and PSF-binding RNAs using CRPC model cells. binding transcripts. PSF was shown to stabilize and activate key Notably, we found that a broad range of spliceosome genes are long noncoding RNAs and AR-regulated gene expressions in pros- primary targets of PSF, and they are induced for activation of tate cancer cells. Interestingly, mRNAs of spliceosome-related splicing and mRNA production in CRPC. Thus, our findings genes are putative primary targets of PSF. Their gene expressions MEDICAL SCIENCES are up-regulated by PSF in hormone-refractory prostate cancer. shed light on the regulatory mechanism of various splicing fac- Moreover, PSF coordinated these spliceosome proteins to form a tors by RNA-binding proteins in prostate cancer progression. complex to promote AR splicing and expression. Thus, targeting Results PSF and its related pathways implicates the therapeutic possibility for hormone-refractory prostate cancer. PSF Promotes Castration-Resistant Prostate Tumor Growth. To in- vestigate the role of PSF in prostate cancer, we analyzed the androgen receptor | RNA-binding protein | PSF | NONO | prostate cancer expression level of PSF. In prostate cancer cell lines, we observed increased expression of PSF in several prostate cancer cells such ndrogen receptor (AR) regulates many genes central to the as DU145, LNCaP, and LNCaP-derived CRPC model cells, Aidentity and behavior of prostate cancer cells (1). AR long-term androgen deprivation (LTAD) cells compared with functions in a ligand-dependent manner in many prostate can- cers, and androgen deprivation therapy is effective in inhibiting Significance tumor growth. However, most of the patients acquire resistance to this therapy and eventually suffer from castration-resistant Elevated downstream signals of androgen receptor (AR) and its prostate cancer (CRPC) (2, 3). Previous studies have discov- variants are important for prostate cancer progression. We ered the importance of enhanced AR downstream signaling (3, show that an RNA-binding transcriptional and splicing factor, 4), expression of AR and its splice variants lacking the ligand splicing factor proline and glutamine-rich (PSF/SFPQ), predicts binding domain (ARVs) in CRPC (5, 6). The variant AR-V7 was worse prognosis of prostate cancer patients. Inhibition of PSF shown to regulate distinct and androgen-independent activation expression repressed treatment-resistant prostate tumor growth of its downstream signals, which contributes to the development in our animal model. Our global analysis of PSF-binding RNAs of CRPC (7). Thus, targeting AR, AR-V7, and its downstream revealed that PSF enhances AR-regulated genes and noncoding RNAs associated with prostate cancer progression. Interestingly, signals could have efficacy in treating CRPC. various splicing factors, which are primary targets of PSF, are Long noncoding (lnc) RNAs function through interaction with upregulated in metastatic prostate tumors. These enhanced fac- epigenetic factors in cancer (8–11). Previous reports highlighted tors form complexes with PSF to promote AR expression and the lncRNA-mediated association of RNA-binding proteins or splicing. Our findings suggest a role of RNA-binding protein for transcription factors with specific genomic regions for prostate AR activation for prostate cancer progression. cancer progression (10, 11). We have reported that androgen- induced lncRNA (named CTBP1-AS) in the antisense region Author contributions: K.T. and S.I. designed research; K.T., T.S., and Y.S. performed re- of carboxyl terminal binding protein 1 (CTBP1) promotes search; T.F., Y.Y., S.T., and Y.H. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; K.T., T.S., and S.I. castration-resistant tumor growth. CTBP1-AS interacts with an analyzed data; and K.T. and S.I. wrote the paper. RNA-binding transcriptional and splicing factor, splicing factor The authors declare no conflict of interest. proline and glutamine-rich (PSF/SFPQ), and represses cell cycle This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. H.-J.K. is a guest editor invited by the regulators by epigenetic mechanism (11). We also found that Editorial Board. PSF and its interacting factor, non–POU-domain–containing Data deposition: Sequences have been deposited in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo (accession nos. GSE94577, GSE94028, octamer-binding protein (NONO), have an important role in GSE94243, and GSE100239). prostate cancer cell proliferation, suggesting the possibility that 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: [email protected]. these RNA-binding proteins are also implicated in the disease This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. progression (11). 1073/pnas.1706076114/-/DCSupplemental. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1706076114 PNAS | September 26, 2017 | vol. 114 | no. 39 | 10461–10466 Downloaded by guest on September 24, 2021 normal prostate epithelial cells (PrEC) (SI Appendix,Fig.S1A). We reduced the growth of tumors derived from 22Rv1 cells (Fig. 1D). evaluated the PSF protein expression in clinical tumor samples by In tumors with reduced PSF expression, induced cell cycle regula- immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis (Fig. 1A) using anti-PSF tors such as p53 and p21 proteins were also observed, suggesting specific antibody (SI Appendix,Fig.S1B). Low PSF staining was that PSF could be a potential target for the treatment of CRPC observed in benign prostate tissues, whereas high PSF staining was (Fig. 1E). These data highlight a potential role of increased PSF in observed in a subset of tumor samples, and higher expression of the CRPC tumor growth. (Additional results are shown in SI PSF correlated with the patients’ cancer-specific survival after Appendix, Text S1 and Figs. S3–S5.) surgery and the PSA-free survival after hormone therapy (Fig. 1B and SI Appendix,Fig.S1C). According to public databases of ex- Global Mapping of PSF-Binding Transcripts Revealed That AR-Regulated pression profiles in prostate cancer clinical samples (such as Genes and Prostate Cancer-Associated lncRNAs Are Specific Targets of Oncomine) (17–19), PSF mRNA expression is significantly ele- PSF. To explore other functions of PSF in prostate cancer, we next vatedinmetastaticoradvancedprostatecancersamples,suggest- analyzed RNAs bound with PSF using deep-sequence analysis (Fig. ing that PSF expression is associated with prostate cancer 2A). First, we performed RNA immunoprecipitation coupled with progression (Fig. 1C and SI Appendix,Fig.S1D–F). deep sequencing (RIP-seq) in LNCaP cells treated with vehicle or We previously reported that PSF-inhibited cell cycle-associated DHT. By mapping sequence tags to RefSeq, GENCODE, and gene such as p53 and SMAD3 expression by transcriptional NONCODE, we identified putative PSF target genes (Fold > 2, P < −5 mechanism in AR-dependent prostate cancer cell lines (LNCaP, 10 ) including lncRNAs (Fig. 2B and SI Appendix,Fig.S6A–C). VCaP) and their CRPC models, LTAD cells (11). In this study, by We further performed RIP-seq in CRPC model cells (LTAD and using short-interference (si) RNAs targeting PSF, we efficiently 22Rv1) (Fig. 2C). In LTAD and 22Rv1 cells, we found more depleted the expression of PSF in other hormone-refractory pros- binding genes, which significantly overlapped with those of LNCaP tate cancer cells such as DU145