Open Access Research2007KaiseretVolume al. 8, Issue 7, Article R131 Transcriptional recapitulation and subversion of embryonic colon comment development by mouse colon tumor models and human colon cancer Sergio Kaiser¤*, Young-Kyu Park¤†, Jeffrey L Franklin†, Richard B Halberg‡, Ming Yu§, Walter J Jessen*, Johannes Freudenberg*, Xiaodi Chen‡, Kevin Haigis¶, Anil G Jegga*, Sue Kong*, Bhuvaneswari Sakthivel*, Huan Xu*, Timothy Reichling¥, Mohammad Azhar#, Gregory P Boivin**, reviews Reade B Roberts§, Anika C Bissahoyo§, Fausto Gonzales††, Greg C Bloom††, Steven Eschrich††, Scott L Carter‡‡, Jeremy E Aronow*, John Kleimeyer*, Michael Kleimeyer*, Vivek Ramaswamy*, Stephen H Settle†, Braden Boone†, Shawn Levy†, Jonathan M Graff§§, Thomas Doetschman#, Joanna Groden¥, William F Dove‡, David W Threadgill§, Timothy J Yeatman††, reports Robert J Coffey Jr† and Bruce J Aronow* Addresses: *Biomedical Informatics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH 45229, USA. †Departments of Medicine, and Cell and Developmental Biology, Vanderbilt University and Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37232, USA. ‡McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA. §Department of Genetics and Lineberger Cancer Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. ¶Molecular Pathology Unit and Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts deposited research General Hospital, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA. ¥Division of Human Cancer Genetics, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, Ohio 43210-2207, USA. #Institute for Collaborative BioResearch, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0036, USA. **University of Cincinnati, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Cincinnati, OH 45267, USA. ††H Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, FL 33612, USA. ‡‡Children's Hospital Informatics Program at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (CHIP@HST), Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. §§University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Dallas, TX 75390, USA. ¤ These authors contributed equally to this work. refereed research refereed Correspondence: Bruce J Aronow. Email: [email protected] Published: 5 July 2007 Received: 22 August 2006 Revised: 12 February 2007 Genome Biology 2007, 8:R131 (doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-7-r131) Accepted: 5 July 2007 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/7/R131 © 2007 Kaiser et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. interactions This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Colon<p>Colononic colon tumours tumorsgene recapitulate expression from four from embryonic independent embryonic transcription mouse days models13.5-18.5.</p> and 100 human colorectal cancers all exhibited striking recapitulation of embry- Abstract Background: The expression of carcino-embryonic antigen by colorectal cancer is an example of information oncogenic activation of embryonic gene expression. Hypothesizing that oncogenesis-recapitulating- ontogenesis may represent a broad programmatic commitment, we compared gene expression patterns of human colorectal cancers (CRCs) and mouse colon tumor models to those of mouse colon development embryonic days 13.5-18.5. Genome Biology 2007, 8:R131 R131.2 Genome Biology 2007, Volume 8, Issue 7, Article R131 Kaiser et al. http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/7/R131 Results: We report here that 39 colon tumors from four independent mouse models and 100 human CRCs encompassing all clinical stages shared a striking recapitulation of embryonic colon gene expression. Compared to normal adult colon, all mouse and human tumors over-expressed a large cluster of genes highly enriched for functional association to the control of cell cycle progression, proliferation, and migration, including those encoding MYC, AKT2, PLK1 and SPARC. Mouse tumors positive for nuclear β-catenin shifted the shared embryonic pattern to that of early development. Human and mouse tumors differed from normal embryonic colon by their loss of expression modules enriched for tumor suppressors (EDNRB, HSPE, KIT and LSP1). Human CRC adenocarcinomas lost an additional suppressor module (IGFBP4, MAP4K1, PDGFRA, STAB1 and WNT4). Many human tumor samples also gained expression of a coordinately regulated module associated with advanced malignancy (ABCC1, FOXO3A, LIF, PIK3R1, PRNP, TNC, TIMP3 and VEGF). Conclusion: Cross-species, developmental, and multi-model gene expression patterning comparisons provide an integrated and versatile framework for definition of transcriptional programs associated with oncogenesis. This approach also provides a general method for identifying pattern-specific biomarkers and therapeutic targets. This delineation and categorization of developmental and non-developmental activator and suppressor gene modules can thus facilitate the formulation of sophisticated hypotheses to evaluate potential synergistic effects of targeting within- and between-modules for next-generation combinatorial therapeutics and improved mouse models. Background the small intestine and colon [8]. A major function of APC is The colon is composed of a dynamic and self-renewing epi- to regulate the canonical WNT signaling pathway as part of a thelium that turns over every three to five days. It is generally β-catenin degradation complex. Loss of APC results in a fail- accepted that at the base of the crypt, variable numbers ure to degrade β-catenin, which instead enters the nucleus to (between 1 and 16) of slowly dividing, stationary, pluripotent act as a transcriptional co-activator with the lymphoid stem cells give rise to more rapidly proliferating, transient enhancer factor/T-cell factor (LEF/TCF) family of transcrip- amplifying cells. These cells differentiate chiefly into post- tion factors [9]. The localization of β-catenin within the mitotic columnar colonocytes, mucin-secreting goblet cells, nucleus indicates activated canonical WNT signaling. In addi- and enteroendocrine cells as they migrate from the crypt base tion to germline APC mutations that occur in persons with to the surface where they are sloughed into the lumen [1]. Sev- familial adenomatous polyposis coli (FAP) and ApcMin/+ mice, eral signaling pathways, notably Wnt, Tgfβ, Bmp, Hedgehog loss of functional APC and activation of canonical WNT sign- and Notch, play pivotal roles in the control of proliferation aling occurs in more than 80% of human sporadic CRCs [10]. and differentiation of the developing and adult colon [2]. Similar to the ApcMin/+ model, tumors in the azoxymethane Their perturbation, via mutation or epigenetic modification, (AOM) carcinogen model, which occur predominantly in the occurs in human colorectal cancer (CRC) and the instillation colon [11], have signaling alterations marked by activated of these changes via genetic engineering in mice confers a cor- canonical WNT signaling. respondingly high risk for neoplasia in the mouse models. Moreover, tumor cell de-differentiation correlates with key Two other mouse models that carry different genetic altera- tumor features, such as tumor progression rates, invasive- tions leading to colon tumor formation are based on the ness, drug resistance and metastatic potential [3-5]. observation that transforming growth factor (TGF)β type II receptor (TGFBR2) gene mutations are present in up to 30% A variety of scientific and organizational obstacles make it a of sporadic CRCs and in more than 90% of tumors that occur challenging proposition to undertake large-scale compari- in patients with the DNA mismatch repair deficiency associ- sons of human cancer to the wide range of genetically engi- ated with hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer (HNPCC) neered mouse models. To evaluate the potential of this [12]. In the mouse, a deficiency of TGFβ1 combined with an approach to provide integrated views of the molecular basis of absence of T-cells (Tgfb1-/-; Rag2-/-) results in a high occur- cancer risk, tumor development and malignant progression, rence of colon cancer [13]. These mice develop adenomas by we have undertaken a comparative analysis of a variety of two months of age, and adenocarcinomas, often mucinous, by individually developed mouse colon tumor models (reviewed three to six months of age. Immunohistochemical analyses of in [6,7]) to human CRC. The ApcMin/+ (multiple intestinal these tumors are negative for nuclear β-catenin, suggesting neoplasia) mouse model harbors a germline mutation in the that TGFβ1 does not suppress tumors via a canonical WNT Apc tumor suppressor gene and exhibits multiple tumors in signaling-dependent pathway. The SMAD family proteins are Genome Biology 2007, 8:R131 http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/7/R131 Genome Biology 2007, Volume 8, Issue 7, Article R131 Kaiser et al. R131.3 critical downstream transcription regulators activated by and statistically compared to an average value among the TGFβ signaling, in part through the TGFβ type II receptor. tumors or to embryonic or adult colon gene expression levels Smad3-/- mice also develop intestinal lesions that include on a per-gene basis. First, we compared the four models with comment colon adenomas and adenocarcinomas by six months of age each other, then to mouse colon development,