Cancer metabolism at a glance Vazquez, Alexei; Kamphorst, Jurre J; Markert, Elke K ...
Journal of cell science,
09/2016, Letnik:
129, Številka:
18
Journal Article
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A defining hallmark of cancer is uncontrolled cell proliferation. This is initiated once cells have accumulated alterations in signaling pathways that control metabolism and proliferation, wherein ...the metabolic alterations provide the energetic and anabolic demands of enhanced cell proliferation. How these metabolic requirements are satisfied depends, in part, on the tumor microenvironment, which determines the availability of nutrients and oxygen. In this Cell Science at a Glance paper and the accompanying poster, we summarize our current understanding of cancer metabolism, emphasizing pathways of nutrient utilization and metabolism that either appear or have been proven essential for cancer cells. We also review how this knowledge has contributed to the development of anticancer therapies that target cancer metabolism.
Missense mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor inactivate its antiproliferative properties but can also promote metastasis through a gain-of-function activity. We show that sustained expression of ...mutant p53 is required to maintain the prometastatic phenotype of a murine model of pancreatic cancer, a highly metastatic disease that frequently displays p53 mutations. Transcriptional profiling and functional screening identified the platelet-derived growth factor receptor b (PDGFRb) as both necessary and sufficient to mediate these effects. Mutant p53 induced PDGFRb through a cell-autonomous mechanism involving inhibition of a p73/NF-Y complex that represses PDGFRb expression in p53-deficient, noninvasive cells. Blocking PDGFRb signaling by RNA interference or by small molecule inhibitors prevented pancreatic cancer cell invasion in vitro and metastasis formation in vivo. Finally, high PDGFRb expression correlates with poor disease-free survival in pancreatic, colon, and ovarian cancer patients, implicating PDGFRb as a prognostic marker and possible target for attenuating metastasis in p53 mutant tumors.
Tumor hypoxia and hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) activation are associated with cancer progression. Here, we demonstrate that the transcription factor TAp73 opposes HIF-1 activity through a ...nontranscriptional mechanism, thus affecting tumor angiogenesis. TAp73-deficient mice have an increased incidence of spontaneous and chemically induced tumors that also display enhanced vascularization. Mechanistically, TAp73 interacts with the regulatory subunit (α) of HIF-1 and recruits mouse double minute 2 homolog into the protein complex, thus promoting HIF-1α polyubiquitination and consequent proteasomal degradation in an oxygen-independent manner. In human lung cancer datasets, TAp73 strongly predicts good patient prognosis, and its expression is associated with low HIF-1 activation and angiogenesis. Our findings, supported by in vivo and clinical evidence, demonstrate a mechanism for oxygen-independent HIF-1 regulation, which has important implications for individualizing therapies in patients with cancer.
Significance Adaptation to hypoxia promotes cancer progression, resulting in enhanced patient mortality. Activation of hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) leads to a transcriptional switch, which, regulating angiogenesis, metabolism, and survival, results in hypoxia adaptation. In cancer, increased HIF-1 levels can be a result of either intratumoral hypoxia or the altered function of tumor suppressors. Our study demonstrates that the tumor suppressor TAp73, a member of the p53 family of genes, opposes HIF-1 activation in cancer cells, resulting in reduced angiogenesis and tumor progression. TAp73-depleted mice show increased tumorigenicity, associated with increased HIF-1 signaling and angiogenesis. Expression of TAp73 in human cancers predicts good survival outcome and retrocorrelates with HIF-1 expression and activation. The TAp73/HIF-1 axis plays a critical role in cancer pathogenesis.
High Gleason score is currently the best prognostic indicator for poor prognosis in prostate cancer. However, a significant number of patients with low Gleason scores develop aggressive disease as ...well. In an effort to understand molecular signatures associated with poor outcome in prostate cancer, we analyzed a microarray dataset characterizing 281 prostate cancers from a Swedish watchful-waiting cohort. Patients were classified on the basis of their mRNA microarray signature profiles indicating embryonic stem cell expression patterns (stemness), inactivation of the tumor suppressors p53 and PTEN, activation of several oncogenic pathways, and the TMPRSS2—ERG fusion. Unsupervised clustering identified a subset of tumors manifesting stem-like signatures together with p53 and PTEN inactivation, which had very poor survival outcome, a second group with intermediate survival outcome, characterized by the TMPRSS2—ERG fusion, and three groups with benign outcome. The stratification was validated on a second independent dataset of 150 tumor and metastatic samples from a clinical cohort at Memorial Sloan—Kettering Cancer Center. This classification is independent of Gleason score and therefore provides useful unique molecular profiles for prostate cancer prognosis, helping to predict poor outcome in patients with low or average Gleason scores.
Human cancers can be classified based on gene signatures quantifying the degree of cell proliferation and tissue remodelling (PR). However, the specific factors that drive the increased tissue ...remodelling in tumours are not fully understood. Here we address this question using colorectal cancer as a case study.
We reanalysed a reported cohort of colorectal cancer patients. The patients were stratified based on gene signatures of cell proliferation and tissue remodelling. Putative transcription factors activity was inferred using gene expression profiles and annotations of transcription factor targets as input.
We demonstrate that the PR classification performs better than the currently adopted consensus molecular subtyping (CMS). Although CMS classification differentiates patients with a mesenchymal signature, it cannot distinguish the remaining patients based on survival. We demonstrate that the missing factor is cell proliferation, which is indicative of good prognosis. We also uncover a KLF4 transcription factor activity score associated with the tissue remodelling gene signature. We further show that the KLF4 activity score is significantly higher in colorectal tumours with predicted infiltration of cells from the myeloid lineage.
The KLF4 activity score is associated with tissue remodelling, myeloid cell infiltration and poor prognosis in colorectal cancer.
Previous experimental evidence indicates that some cancer cells have an alternative glycolysis pathway with net zero ATP production, implying that upregulation of glycolysis in these cells may not be ...related to the generation of ATP. Here we use a genome-scale model of human cell metabolism to investigate the potential metabolic alterations in cells using net zero ATP glycolysis. We uncover a novel pathway for ATP generation that involves reactions from serine biosynthesis, one-carbon metabolism and the glycine cleavage system, and show that the pathway is transcriptionally upregulated in an inducible murine model of Myc-driven liver tumorigenesis. This pathway has a predicted two-fold higher flux rate in cells using net zero ATP glycolysis than those using standard glycolysis and generates twice as much ATP with significantly lower rate of lactate - but higher rate of alanine secretion. Thus, in cells using the standard - or the net zero ATP glycolysis pathways a significant portion of the glycolysis flux is always associated with ATP generation, and the ratio between the flux rates of the two pathways determines the rate of ATP generation and lactate and alanine secretion during glycolysis.
p63 inhibits metastasis. Here, we show that p63 (both TAp63 and ΔNp63 isoforms) regulates expression of miR-205 in prostate cancer (PCa) cells, and miR-205 is essential for the inhibitory effects of ...p63 on markers of epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT), such as ZEB1 and vimentin. Correspondingly, the inhibitory effect of p63 on EMT markers and cell migration is reverted by anti–miR-205. p53 mutants inhibit expression of both p63 and miR-205, and the cell migration, in a cell line expressing endogenous mutated p53, can be abrogated by pre–miR-205 or silencing of mutated p53. In accordance with this in vitro data, ΔNp63 or miR-205 significantly inhibits the incidence of lung metastasis in vivo in a mouse tail vein model. Similarly, one or both components of the p63/miR-205 axis were absent in metastases or colonized lymph nodes in a set of 218 human prostate cancer samples. This was confirmed in an independent clinical data set of 281 patients. Loss of this axis was associated with higher Gleason scores, an increased likelihood of metastatic and infiltration events, and worse prognosis. These data suggest that p63/miR-205 may be a useful clinical predictor of metastatic behavior in prostate cancer.
Despite the clinical success of Androgen Receptor (AR)-targeted therapies, reactivation of AR signalling remains the main driver of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) progression. In this ...study, we perform a comprehensive unbiased characterisation of LNCaP cells chronically exposed to multiple AR inhibitors (ARI). Combined proteomics and metabolomics analyses implicate an acquired metabolic phenotype common in ARI-resistant cells and associated with perturbed glucose and lipid metabolism. To exploit this phenotype, we delineate a subset of proteins consistently associated with ARI resistance and highlight mitochondrial 2,4-dienoyl-CoA reductase (DECR1), an auxiliary enzyme of beta-oxidation, as a clinically relevant biomarker for CRPC. Mechanistically, DECR1 participates in redox homeostasis by controlling the balance between saturated and unsaturated phospholipids. DECR1 knockout induces ER stress and sensitises CRPC cells to ferroptosis. In vivo, DECR1 deletion impairs lipid metabolism and reduces CRPC tumour growth, emphasizing the importance of DECR1 in the development of treatment resistance.
The signalling pathways underpinning cell growth and invasion use overlapping components, yet how mutually exclusive cellular responses occur is unclear. Here, we report development of 3-Dimensional ...culture analyses to separately quantify growth and invasion. We identify that alternate variants of IQSEC1, an ARF GTPase Exchange Factor, act as switches to promote invasion over growth by controlling phosphoinositide metabolism. All IQSEC1 variants activate ARF5- and ARF6-dependent PIP5-kinase to promote PI(3,4,5)P
-AKT signalling and growth. In contrast, select pro-invasive IQSEC1 variants promote PI(3,4,5)P
production to form invasion-driving protrusions. Inhibition of IQSEC1 attenuates invasion in vitro and metastasis in vivo. Induction of pro-invasive IQSEC1 variants and elevated IQSEC1 expression occurs in a number of tumour types and is associated with higher-grade metastatic cancer, activation of PI(3,4,5)P
signalling, and predicts long-term poor outcome across multiple cancers. IQSEC1-regulated phosphoinositide metabolism therefore is a switch to induce invasion over growth in response to the same external signal. Targeting IQSEC1 as the central regulator of this switch may represent a therapeutic vulnerability to stop metastasis.
Intratumoral hypoxia causes the formation of dysfunctional blood vessels, which contribute to tumor metastasis and reduce the efficacy of therapeutic treatments. Blood vessels are embedded in the ...tumor stroma of which cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) constitute a prominent cellular component. We found that hypoxic human mammary CAFs promoted angiogenesis in CAF-endothelial cell cocultures in vitro. Mass spectrometry-based proteomic analysis of the CAF secretome unraveled that hypoxic CAFs contributed to blood vessel abnormalities by altering their secretion of various pro- and anti-angiogenic factors. Hypoxia induced pronounced remodeling of the CAF proteome, including proteins that have not been previously related to this process. Among those, the uncharacterized protein NCBP2-AS2 that we renamed HIAR (hypoxia-induced angiogenesis regulator) was the protein most increased in abundance in hypoxic CAFs. Silencing of HIAR abrogated the pro-angiogenic and pro-migratory function of hypoxic CAFs by decreasing secretion of the pro-angiogenic factor VEGFA and consequently reducing VEGF/VEGFR downstream signaling in the endothelial cells. Our study has identified a regulator of angiogenesis and provides a map of hypoxia-induced molecular alterations in mammary CAFs.