Project description:The majority of human cancers become highly dependent on a deregulated MYC oncogene, thus identifying a common mechanism underlying MYC regulation could provide valuable targets for therapy. We show here that diverse tumor-specific super-enhancers acquired throughout the 3Mb MYC insulated neighborhood functionally interact with a single conserved site occupied by CTCF protein in the MYC promoter. CRISPR-mediated deletion analysis shows that this common CTCF site is required for super-enhancer looping to the MYC promoter, high MYC expression and rapid cell proliferation in multiple cancers. Targeted methylation of the MYC enhancer anchor by a dCAS9-DNMT3A-3L fusion protein abrogates CTCF binding with consequent loss of MYC expression, suggesting a common vulnerability and a novel approach for therapeutic targeting of aggressive cancers.
Project description:The majority of human cancers become highly dependent on a deregulated MYC oncogene, thus identifying a common mechanism underlying MYC regulation could provide valuable targets for therapy. We show here that diverse tumor-specific super-enhancers acquired throughout the 3Mb MYC insulated neighborhood functionally interact with a single conserved site occupied by CTCF protein in the MYC promoter. CRISPR-mediated deletion analysis shows that this common CTCF site is required for super-enhancer looping to the MYC promoter, high MYC expression and rapid cell proliferation in multiple cancers. Targeted methylation of the MYC enhancer anchor by a dCAS9-DNMT3A-3L fusion protein abrogates CTCF binding with consequent loss of MYC expression, suggesting a common vulnerability and a novel approach for therapeutic targeting of aggressive cancers.
Project description:The majority of human cancers become highly dependent on a deregulated MYC oncogene, thus identifying a common mechanism underlying MYC regulation could provide valuable targets for therapy. We show here that diverse tumor-specific super-enhancers acquired throughout the 3Mb MYC insulated neighborhood functionally interact with a single conserved site occupied by CTCF protein in the MYC promoter. CRISPR-mediated deletion analysis shows that this common CTCF site is required for super-enhancer looping to the MYC promoter, high MYC expression and rapid cell proliferation in multiple cancers. Targeted methylation of the MYC enhancer anchor by a dCAS9-DNMT3A-3L fusion protein abrogates CTCF binding with consequent loss of MYC expression, suggesting a common vulnerability and a novel approach for therapeutic targeting of aggressive cancers.
Project description:STAG2, a member of cohesin, is one of the most recurrently mutated genes in human cancer. Here, we investigated STAG2 function in the context of Ewing sarcoma, an aggressive bone tumor driven by EWS-FLI1 oncogene chimeric transcription factor. A673 Ewing sarcoma cell line was trasfected with siCT or 2 different siRNA targetting STAG2 during 72h and CTCF HiChIP experiments were preformed for each conditions. Analyses of HiChIP data show that STAG2 knowck-down alters CTCF-anchored loop extrusion.