Project description:SUMMARY: Basal breast cancer has been associated with mutations in a number of specific tumor suppressor genes, however, the mechanism by which these tumors express a basal lineage remains unknown. Notch signaling suppresses mammary stem cell (MaSC) self-renewal, while promoting luminal cell fate specification. Here we show that Lfng, a sugar transferase that facilitates Notch activation, suppresses mammary stem/bipotent progenitor cell proliferation. Targeted deletion of Lfng in mammary epithelium induces basal tumors with reduced expression of Notch targets, amplification of the Met/Caveolin gene locus, and elevated Met and Igf-1R signaling. Human basal breast cancer, a disease associated with elevated MET receptor signaling and Caveolin protein, express low levels of LFNG. Thus, reduced LFNG expression cooperates with a Met/ Caveolin amplicon to promote basal breast disease. SIGNIFICANCE: Anti-Notch therapy is currently being tested for efficacy against basal-like breast cancer in humans. Here we report that LFNG, which controls Notch receptor activation, is consistently expressed at a low level in basal tumors and that deletion of this gene in the mouse mammary gland reduces Notch signaling, increases proliferation and induces basal mammary tumors in cooperation with amplification of the Met/Caveolin gene locus. These mutations interact to promote basal gene expression by decreasing Notch pathway activation, as well as to enhance Met and Igf-1R signaling. These pathways can be targeted at multiple levels in humans harboring basal breast cancer with amplification of MET and CAV1/2 32 array samples
Project description:SUMMARY: Basal breast cancer has been associated with mutations in a number of specific tumor suppressor genes, however, the mechanism by which these tumors express a basal lineage remains unknown. Notch signaling suppresses mammary stem cell (MaSC) self-renewal, while promoting luminal cell fate specification. Here we show that Lfng, a sugar transferase that facilitates Notch activation, suppresses mammary stem/bipotent progenitor cell proliferation. Targeted deletion of Lfng in mammary epithelium induces basal tumors with reduced expression of Notch targets, amplification of the Met/Caveolin gene locus, and elevated Met and Igf-1R signaling. Human basal breast cancer, a disease associated with elevated MET receptor signaling and Caveolin protein, express low levels of LFNG. Thus, reduced LFNG expression cooperates with a Met/ Caveolin amplicon to promote basal breast disease. SIGNIFICANCE: Anti-Notch therapy is currently being tested for efficacy against basal-like breast cancer in humans. Here we report that LFNG, which controls Notch receptor activation, is consistently expressed at a low level in basal tumors and that deletion of this gene in the mouse mammary gland reduces Notch signaling, increases proliferation and induces basal mammary tumors in cooperation with amplification of the Met/Caveolin gene locus. These mutations interact to promote basal gene expression by decreasing Notch pathway activation, as well as to enhance Met and Igf-1R signaling. These pathways can be targeted at multiple levels in humans harboring basal breast cancer with amplification of MET and CAV1/2
Project description:The lung cancer tumor K-rasLA1/ p53 R172HDeltag mouse model was used to identify genes associated to the tumor mass increase in lungs. Those genes were then ranked on the basis of their oncogenic potential using a metadataset encompassing 695 human lung adenocarcinomas and ranking them on the basis of their expression in normal tissues. The genes characterized by the higher oncogenic potential combined to a low expression in normal tissues were selected as putative targets for preclinical studies on lung cancer vaccination. Two prototypic situations (WT, and MUT) were examined using Exon arrays over a three-points time course (10, 20, and 30 weeks old animals), for each time point two/three male and female animals were used. A total of 30 mouse Exon 1.0 arrays were hybridized.
Project description:Peptide vaccination remains a viable approach to induce T-cell mediated killing of tumours. To identify potential T-cell targets for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) vaccination, we examined the effect of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interferon-γ (IFNγ) on the transcriptome, proteome and immunopeptidome of the TNBC cell line MDA-MB-231. Using high resolution mass spectrometry, we identified a total of 84,131 peptides from 9,647 source proteins presented by human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-I and HLA-II alleles. Treatment with IFNγ resulted in a remarkable remoulding of the immunopeptidome, with only a 34% overlap between untreated and treated cells across the HLA-I immunopeptidome, and expression of HLA-II only on treated cells. IFNγ increased the overall number, diversity and abundance of the immunopeptidome, as well as the proportion of coverage of source antigens. The suite of peptides displayed under conditions of IFNγ treatment included many known tumour associated antigens, with the HLA-II repertoire sampling 265 breast cancer associated antigens absent from those sampled by HLA-I. Quantitative analysis of the transcriptome (10,248 transcripts) and proteome (6783 proteins) of these cells revealed 229 proteins and transcripts were commonly differentially expressed, most of which involved in downstream targets of IFNγ signalling including components of the antigen processing machinery such as tapasin and HLA. However, these changes in protein expression did not explain the dramatic modulation of the immunopeptidome following IFNγ treatment. These results demonstrate the high degree of plasticity in the immunopeptidome TNBC cells following cytokine stimulation and provide evidence that under pro-inflammatory conditions a greater variety of HLA-I and HLA-II vaccine targets are unveiled to the immune system. This has important implications for the development of personalised cancer vaccination strategies.