Project description:Elucidating the pathogenesis of chemoresistance is fundamental for developing more effective interventions that will improve the clinical outcome of neoplastic diseases such as ovarian cancer. Here, we report the upregulation of PBX1, a stem cell reprogramming factor, in recurrent ovarian carcinomas. Moreover, high levels of PBX1 expression are correlated with a shorter survival rate among post-chemotherapy ovarian cancer patients. Ectopic expression of PBX1 promotes cancer stem cell-like phenotypes, including increased side population and ALDH activity, enhanced tumorigenicity at a low cell density, and increased resistance to platinum-based therapy. Silencing PBX1 in platinum-resistant cell lines that overexpress PBX1 sensitizes cells to platinum treatment and reduces their â??stemnessâ??. Analysis of previously reported genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation data shows that PBX1 binds directly to promoters of genes involved in stem cell maintenance and tissue injury response. We confirmed direct regulation of STAT3 by PBX1, and demonstrated that the PBX1 binding motif located on the STAT3 promoter participates in positive transcriptional regulation of STAT3. Furthermore, a STAT3/JAK2 inhibitor potently sensitizes platinum-resistant cells to carboplatin and suppresses their growth in vivo. These findings establish PBX1 as an upstream regulator of key pathways in stem cell and tissue damage response and highlight the potential of targeting the PBX1/STAT3 axis to overcome chemoresistance in human cancers. Determine gene expression changes after knockdown of PBX1 protein in an ovarian cancer cell line (OVCAR3)
Project description:Elucidating the pathogenesis of chemoresistance is fundamental for developing more effective interventions that will improve the clinical outcome of neoplastic diseases such as ovarian cancer. Here, we report the upregulation of PBX1, a stem cell reprogramming factor, in recurrent ovarian carcinomas. Moreover, high levels of PBX1 expression are correlated with a shorter survival rate among post-chemotherapy ovarian cancer patients. Ectopic expression of PBX1 promotes cancer stem cell-like phenotypes, including increased side population and ALDH activity, enhanced tumorigenicity at a low cell density, and increased resistance to platinum-based therapy. Silencing PBX1 in platinum-resistant cell lines that overexpress PBX1 sensitizes cells to platinum treatment and reduces their “stemness”. Analysis of previously reported genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation data shows that PBX1 binds directly to promoters of genes involved in stem cell maintenance and tissue injury response. We confirmed direct regulation of STAT3 by PBX1, and demonstrated that the PBX1 binding motif located on the STAT3 promoter participates in positive transcriptional regulation of STAT3. Furthermore, a STAT3/JAK2 inhibitor potently sensitizes platinum-resistant cells to carboplatin and suppresses their growth in vivo. These findings establish PBX1 as an upstream regulator of key pathways in stem cell and tissue damage response and highlight the potential of targeting the PBX1/STAT3 axis to overcome chemoresistance in human cancers.
Project description:Ovarian cancer (OC) is the leading cause of death from gynecologic malignancies in the US. Ovarian cancer stem cells (OCSCs) have been shown to drive chemoresistance and tumor progression but the mechanism remains incompletely understood. Aldehyde Dehydrogenase 1A1 (ALDH1A1) is a robust marker for cancer stem cells in ovarian and other cancers. We demonstrate that ALDH1A1 inhibition suppresses stemness, chemoresistance and senescence in ovarian cancer.
Project description:Ovarian cancer (OC) displays the highest mortality among gynecological tumors, mainly due to early peritoneal dissemination, the high frequency of tumor relapse following primary debulking and the development of chemoresistance. All these events are thought to be initiated and sustained by a subpopulation of neoplastic cells, termed ovarian cancer stem cells (OCSC), that are endowed with self-renewing and tumor-initiating properties. This implies that interfering with OCSC function should offer novel therapeutic perspectives to defeat OC progression. To this aim, a better understanding of the molecular and functional makeup of OCSC in clinically relevant model systems is essential. We have profiled the transcriptome of OCSC vs. their bulk cell counterpart from a panel of patient-derived OC cell cultures. This revealed that Matrix Gla Protein (MGP), classically known as a calcification-preventing factor in cartilage and blood vessels, is markedly enriched in OCSC. Functional assays showed that MGP confers several stemness-associated traits to OC cells, including a transcriptional reprogramming. Patient-derived organotypic cultures pointed to the peritoneal microenvironment as a major inducer of MGP expression in OC cells. Furthermore, MGP was found to be necessary and sufficient for tumor initiation in OC mouse models, by shortening tumor latency and increasing dramatically the frequency of tumor-initiating cells. Mechanistically, MGP-driven OC stemness was mediated by the stimulation of Hedgehog signaling, in particular through the induction of the Hedgehog effector GLI1, thus highlighting a novel MGP/Hedgehog pathway axis in OCSC. Finally, MGP expression was found to correlate with poor prognosis in OC patients, and was increased in tumor tissue after chemotherapy, supporting the clinical relevance of our findings. Thus, MGP is a novel driver in OCSC pathophysiology, with a major role in stemness and in tumor initiation.
Project description:We profile expression in serous epithelial ovarian carcinomas to assess the possibility of an miRNA signature associated with chemoresistance. Resistance to the available therapies is one of the main causes of low survival of patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer, thus representing an emergency in oncology. Here, we profiled miRNA expression in 86 naïve serous epithelial ovarian carcinomas (EOCs) to assess the possibility of miRNAs associated with chemoresistance. We identified 23 miRNAs associated with chemoresistance, of which three (miR-484, miR-642 and miR-217) were confirmed in the validation set (112 independent patients). The study of miR-484 role demonstrated that it regulated the chemoresistance of EOC cells acting not on cancer cells but on tumor vasculature. In particular, miR-484 is produced and secreted by chemosensitive EOC, therefore regulating the production of VEGFB by cancer cells and the expression of VEGFR2 in endothelial cells. Overall, we demonstrated that a three-miR signature can classify the response to chemotherapy and that chemoresistance in EOC relays, at least in part, on the control of tumor angiogenesis, indicating new options in the treatment of these patients. We analyzed tumor samples (<5% of normal tissue) from FFPE blocks of 86 patients with serous ovarian carcinomas.
Project description:<h4>Background</h4>Cancer metabolism is emerging as an important focus area in cancer research. However, the in vitro cell culture conditions under which much cellular metabolism research is performed differ drastically from in vivo tumor conditions, which are characterized by variations in the levels of oxygen, nutrients like glucose, and other molecules like chemotherapeutics. Moreover, it is important to know how the diverse cell types in a tumor, including cancer stem cells that are believed to be a major cause of cancer recurrence, respond to these variations. Here, in vitro environmental perturbations designed to mimic different aspects of the in vivo environment were used to characterize how an ovarian cancer cell line and its derived, isogenic cancer stem cells metabolically respond to environmental cues.<h4>Results</h4>Mass spectrometry was used to profile metabolite levels in response to in vitro environmental perturbations. Docetaxel, the chemotherapeutic used for this experiment, caused significant metabolic changes in amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism in ovarian cancer cells, but had virtually no metabolic effect on isogenic ovarian cancer stem cells. Glucose deprivation, hypoxia, and the combination thereof altered ovarian cancer cell and cancer stem cell metabolism to varying extents for the two cell types. Hypoxia had a much larger effect on ovarian cancer cell metabolism, while glucose deprivation had a greater effect on ovarian cancer stem cell metabolism. Core metabolites and pathways affected by these perturbations were identified, along with pathways that were unique to cell types or perturbations.<h4>Conclusions</h4>The metabolic responses of an ovarian cancer cell line and its derived isogenic cancer stem cells differ greatly under most conditions, suggesting that these two cell types may behave quite differently in an in vivo tumor microenvironment. While cancer metabolism and cancer stem cells are each promising potential therapeutic targets, such varied behaviors in vivo would need to be considered in the design and early testing of such treatments.
Project description:Chemoresistance remains the major barrier to effective ovarian cancer treatment. The molecular features and associated biological functions of this phenotype remain poorly understood. We developed carboplatin resistant cell line models using OVCAR5 and CaOV3 cell lines with the aim of identifying chemoresistance-specific molecular features. Chemotaxis and CAM invasion assays revealed enhanced migratory and invasive potential in OVCAR5 resistant, compared to parental cells lines. Mass spectrometry analysis was used to analyse the metabolome and proteome of these cell lines and was able to separate these populations based on their molecular features. It revealed signalling and metabolic perturbations in chemoresistant cell lines. Comparison with the proteome of patient derived primary ovarian cancer cells grown in culture showed a shared dysregulation of cytokine and type 1 interferon signalling, potentially revealing a common molecular feature of chemoresistance. A comprehensive analysis of a larger patient cohort, including advanced in vitro and in vivo models, promises to help better understand the molecular mechanisms of chemoresistance and associated enhancement of migration and invasion.
Project description:The patient-derived xenograft (PDX) model retains the heterogeneity of patient tumors, allowing a means to not only examine efficacy of a therapy across a population, but also study crucial aspects of cancer biology in response to treatment. Herein we describe the development and characterization of an ovarian-PDX model in order to study the development of chemoresistance. We demonstrate that PDX tumors are not simply composed of tumor-initiating cells, but recapitulate the original tumor’s heterogeneity, oncogene expression profiles, and clinical response to chemotherapy. Combined carboplatin/paclitaxel treatment of PDX tumors enriches the cancer stem cell populations, but persistent tumors are not entirely composed of these populations. RNA-Seq analysis of treated PDX tumors compared to untreated tumors demonstrates a consistently contrasting genetic profile after therapy, suggesting similar, but few, pathways are mediating chemoresistance. The pathways most significantly altered included Protein Kinase A signaling, GNRH signaling, and sphingosine-1-phosphate signaling. Pathways and genes identified by this methodology represent novel approaches to targeting the chemoresistant population in ovarian cancer 6 pairs of Patient-Derived Xenografts (PDX) were ananlyzed using RNA-seq for a total of 12 samples. Each pair consists of a treated and untreated PDX of ovarian cancer. Treated Ovarian cancer PDXs were treated with 4 weeks of a combination of carboplatin and taxol. RNA was isolated and converted to cDNA. RNA-seq was conductred on the Illumina HiSeq 2000 with 50 bp paired end sequencing
Project description:Recently, multicellular spheroids were isolated from a well-established epithelial ovarian cancer cell line, OVCAR-3, and were propagated in vitro. These spheroid derived cells displayed numerous hallmarks of cancer stem cells, which are chemo and radioresistant cells thought to be a significant cause of cancer recurrence and resultant mortality. Gene set enrichment analysis of expression data from the OVCAR-3 cells and the spheroid-derived putative cancer stem cells identified several metabolic pathways enriched in differentially expressed genes. Before this, there had been little previous knowledge or investigation of systems-scale metabolic differences between cancer cells and cancer stem cells, and no knowledge of such differences in ovarian cancer stem cells. To determine if there were substantial metabolic changes corresponding with these transcriptional differences, we used two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry to measure the metabolite profiles of the two cell lines. These two cell lines exhibited significant metabolic differences in both intracellular and extracellular metabolite measurements. Principal components analysis, an unsupervised dimensional reduction technique, showed complete separation between the two cell types based on their metabolite profiles. Pathway analysis of intracellular metabolomics data revealed close overlap with metabolic pathways identified from gene expression data, with four out of six pathways found enriched in gene-level analysis also enriched in metabolite-level analysis. Some of those pathways contained multiple metabolites that were individually statistically significantly different between the two cell lines, with one of the most broadly and consistently different pathways, arginine and proline metabolism, suggesting an interesting hypothesis about cancerous and stem-like metabolic phenotypes in this pair of cell lines. Overall, we demonstrate for the first time that metabolism in an ovarian cancer stem cell line is distinct from that of more differentiated isogenic cancer cells, supporting the potential importance of metabolism in the differences between cancer cells and cancer stem cells.
Project description:Ovarian cancer (OC) is the most lethal gynecological cancer due to its late diagnosis and, importantly, its high rate of chemoresistance. Hypoxia in solid tumors is an important source of chemoresistance that can determine poor patient prognosis. Such chemoresistance relies on the presence of cancer stem cells (CSCs), and hypoxia promotes their generation through transcriptional activation by HIF transcription factors. We use OC cell lines, xenograft models, OC patient samples, transcriptional databases, iPSCs and ATAC-seq. We show here that hypoxia induces the formation of ovarian CSCs through transcriptional activation of the PLD2 gene encoding phospholipase D2. HIF-1 activates PLD2 transcription through hypoxia response elements located within PLD2 promoter and an intronic enhancer. PLD2 overexpression leads to similar effects than hypoxia, increasing CSC-like features, stemness gene expression and enhancing cell reprogramming in OC cells, as well as chromatin accessibility around stemness genes detected by ATAC-seq. Conversely, PLD2 depletion in hypoxia partially suppresses these effects, indicating that PLD2 is a major determinant of hypoxia-induced CSC generation in OC. Indeed, PLD2 expression is high in OC patients leading to poor survival and a transcriptional switch in the genes related to the response to hypoxia and stemness. Finally, we demonstrate that PLD2 overexpression provokes resistance to platinum-based chemotherapy and that combination of cisplatin with pharmacological inhibition of PLD2 suppresses such resistance. Altogether, our work highlights the importance of the HIF-1-PLD2 axis for CSC generation and chemoresistance in OC and proposes an alternative treatment for patients with high PLD2 expression.