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  • Coexpression of NOS2 and CO...
    Basudhar, Debashree; Glynn, Sharon A.; Greer, Madison; Somasundaram, Veena; No, Jae Hong; Scheiblin, David A.; Garrido, Pablo; Heinz, William F.; Ryan, Aideen E.; Weiss, Jonathan M.; Cheng, Robert Y. S.; Ridnour, Lisa A.; Lockett, Stephen J.; McVicar, Daniel W.; Ambs, Stefan; Wink, David A.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 12/2017, Volume: 114, Issue: 49
    Journal Article

    Proinflammatory signaling pathways are commonly up-regulated in breast cancer. In estrogen receptor-negative (ER⁻) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), nitric oxide synthase-2 (NOS2) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) have been described as independent predictors of disease outcome. We further explore these findings by investigating the impact of their coexpression on breast cancer survival. Elevated coexpression of NOS2/COX2 proteins is a strong predictor of poor survival among ER⁻ patients (hazard ratio: 21). Furthermore, we found that the key products of NOS2 and COX2, NO and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), respectively, promote feed-forward NOS2/COX2 crosstalk in both MDA-MB-468 (basal-like) and MDA-MB-231 (mesenchymal-like) TNBC cell lines in which NO induced COX2 and PGE2 induced NOS2 proteins. COX2 induction by NO involved TRAF2 activation that occurred in a TNFα-dependent manner in MDA-MB-468 cells. In contrast, NO-mediated TRAF2 activation in the more aggressive MDA-MB-231 cells was TNFα independent but involved the endoplasmic reticulum stress response. Inhibition of NOS2 and COX2 using amino-guanidine and aspirin/indomethacin yielded an additive reduction in the growth of MDA-MB-231 tumor xenografts. These findings support a role of NOS2/COX2 crosstalk during disease progression of aggressive cancer phenotypes and offer insight into therapeutic applications for better survival of patients with ER⁻ and TNBC disease.