Project description:Stable cisplatin- and vincristine-tolerant Group 3 and SHH cell lines were generated by continuous drug exposure with dose escalation to identify mechanisms driving resistance to standard-of-care medulloblastoma therapy. Next-generation sequencing revealed a vastly different transcriptomic landscape following chronic drug exposure, including a drug-tolerant gene expression signature, common to all sequenced drug-tolerant cell lines.
Project description:To investigate the mechanism associated with cis-platin intrinsic resistance, we established a model of early drug-tolerant persister cells by exposing lung adenocarcinoma cell lines to the drug for 24 h. Then, we analyzed the transcriptome using RNA-seq from 4 different lung adenocarcinoma cell lines.
Project description:Drug-tolerant persister cells withstand treatments by adapting their identity through lineage-dependent plasticity during systemic anti-cancer therapies. This phenomenon is evident in small-cell lung carcinoma (SCLC), a lethal neuroendocrine cancer initially responsive (60-80%) to platinum-based chemotherapy but succumbing to resistance within 6 months in advanced stages. This resistance associates with the transdifferentiation of residual tumour cells into a non-neuroendocrine state, a process intricately tied to SCLC's chemotolerance, yet molecular mechanisms governing this lineage conversion remain completed understood. Here we use paired cytoplasmic RNA-seq and polysomal RNA-seq to compare gene expression between NE and non-NE SCLC cell lines on both transcriptional and translational level. We report that first-line chemotherapy induces translation initiation factor eIF6 in drug-tolerant persister-like cells in SCLC, correlating with the non-neuroendocrine state in SCLC. Intervening eIF6 inhibits non-neuroendocrine transdifferentiation, thus enhancing SCLC responsiveness to chemotherapy. This study sheds light on eIF6's potential therapeutic interventions to mitigate treatment resistance in SCLC.
Project description:we used gene expression profiling to determine gene expression changes in sensitive and drug tolerant medulloblastoma cells to reexposure to BET-bromodomain inhibitors
Project description:Cancer relapse after curative treatment is thought to originate from drug-tolerant and invisible cancer cell subpopulations. Using cancer cell colonies emerging in the presence of drugs (drug-tolerant colonies, DTCs), we found that the drug-tolerant properties of DTCs are lost through a reversible mechanism. To examine whether epigenetic regulation is responsible for the phenotypic changes in DTCs, we performed a genome-wide analysis for relative CpG methylation between the DTCs and untreated colonies derived from MKN45 by NimbleGen Human Meth 385K Prom Plus CpG Arrays. Global changes in the methylation levels were evident in a chromosomal location-dependent manner. The methylation status of the upstream regions of the transcription start sites of the pluripotency-inducing genes showed good agreement with the qRT-PCR data. These results suggest that reversible drug-tolerant properties in DTCs are epigenetically regulated and associated with transcriptional regulation, including pluripotency-inducing factors. Comparison of untreated colonies v.s. DTCs derived from MKN45 cells.
Project description:Drug tolerant persister cells of EGFR-mutant PC9 cell lines surviving treatment with kinase inhibitor combination. Cells were treated with combination of erlotinib, osimertinib, trametinib and dasatinib and surviving cells were harvested for RNA extraction. 3' UTR RNA-seq profiles were compared to parental control cells and to outgrowing cells after treatment had been removed
Project description:Cancer relapse after curative treatment is thought to originate from drug-tolerant and invisible cancer cell subpopulations. Using cancer cell colonies emerging in the presence of drugs (drug-tolerant colonies, DTCs), we found that the drug-tolerant properties of DTCs are lost through a reversible mechanism. To examine whether epigenetic regulation is responsible for the phenotypic changes in DTCs, we performed a genome-wide analysis for relative CpG methylation between the DTCs and untreated colonies derived from MKN45 by NimbleGen Human Meth 385K Prom Plus CpG Arrays. Global changes in the methylation levels were evident in a chromosomal location-dependent manner. The methylation status of the upstream regions of the transcription start sites of the pluripotency-inducing genes showed good agreement with the qRT-PCR data. These results suggest that reversible drug-tolerant properties in DTCs are epigenetically regulated and associated with transcriptional regulation, including pluripotency-inducing factors.
Project description:Establishing and maintaining phenotypic heterogeneity within cell and organismal populations is an evolutionarily conserved strategy that ensures survival of the population following stressful exposures. We previously identified a transient, reversible, drug-tolerant cancer cell subpopulation that survives otherwise lethal drug exposures. Here we show that these drug-tolerant persisters (DTPs) assume a highly heterochromatic state, which requires factors that modify or bind trimethylated H3 lysine 9 (H3K9me3). The increased H3K9me3 in DTPs is largely restricted to evolutionarily young Long Interspersed Repeat elements (LINEs). This transcriptionally repressive state, which decreases the expression of these retrotransposable elements, is critical for DTP survival, and disruption of this heterochromatic state results in re-expression of LINE elements and ablation of this subpopulation. Together, these findings establish a role for epigenetic silencing of transposable elements as a population survival strategy to maintain genomic integrity in subpopulations of cancer cells during lethal drug exposures.