Staphylococcal Nuclease and Tudor Domain Containing protein SND1 interacts with ERG and plays a critical role in prostate cancer in vivo

ABSTRACT: SND1 and its partner MTDH promote cancer and therapeutic resistance; however, the mechanisms responsible for their function and potential cooperation with other oncogenes are not completely understood. We report here that oncoprotein ERG binds to the SND1/MTDH protein complex via the Tudor domain of SND1. ERG is an ETS-domain transcriptional factor, which is recombined and overexpressed in approximately half of human prostate cancers. siRNA-mediated knockdowns and CRISPR-Cas9-mediated knockout of SND1 in human prostate epithelium cell lines revealed a critical role of SND1 in proliferation of ERG-overexpressing prostate epithelial cells. Transcriptional analysis of ERG-positive human prostate cancer cells demonstrated significant overlap between genes regulated by ERG and SND1. Mechanistically, we found that ERG promoted nuclear localization of SND1/MTDH. Significantly, forced nuclear localization of SND1 by addition of exogenous nuclear localization sequences (NLS) prominently increased its growth promoting function irrespective of the status of ERG expression. To determine if SND1 is necessary for prostate cancer tumorigenesis in vivo, we generated mice with prostate-epithelium-specific deletion of Snd1. We found that inactivation of Snd1 did not impact normal prostate gland homeostasis. However, prostate epithelium-specific deletion of Snd1 in autochthonous mouse model of prostate cancer (PB-Cre/ERG/PTENflox/flox mice) showed greatly reduced invasive cancer growth and tumor burden. Moreover, gene expression analysis revealed a significant overlap between in vivo prostate transcriptional signatures of ERG and Snd1. We conclude that SND1 plays a critical role in prostate tumorigenesis and targeting SND1 may represent a potential therapeutic target in prostate cancer.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE212840 | GEO | 2023/09/11

REPOSITORIES: GEO