Project description:To investigate FOXC1 chromatin binding, and the effect of FOXC1 CRISPR knockout in triple negative breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-468, Hs578t, and Bt-549.
Project description:To investigate FOXC1 chromatin binding, and the effect of FOXC1 CRISPR knockout in triple negative breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-468, Hs578t, and Bt-549.
Project description:Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is characterized by lack of receptors, estrogen (ER), progesterone, and Her2, and standard receptor-targeted therapies are ineffective. FOXC1, a transcriptional factor aberrantly overexpressed in many cancers, drives growth, metastasis, and stem-cell-like properties in TNBC. However, the molecular function of FOXC1 is unknown, partly due to heterogeneity of TNBC. Here, we show that although FOXC1 regulates many cancer hallmarks in TNBC, its function is varied in different cell lines, highlighted by the differential response to CDK4/6 inhibitors upon FOXC1 loss. Despite this functional heterogeneity, we show that FOXC1 regulates key oncogenes and tumor suppressors and identify a set of core FOXC1 peaks conserved across TNBC cell lines. We identify the ER-associated and drug-targetable nuclear receptor NR2F2 as a cofactor of FOXC1. Finally, we show that core FOXC1 targets in TNBC are parallelly regulated by the pioneer factor FOXA1 and the nuclear receptor NR2F2 in ER+ breast cancer.
Project description:Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women. Of the different subtypes of breast cancer, the triple negative breast cancer subtype of breast cancer is the most aggressive. A proteomic screen of nucleolar content across breast cancer subtypes found that triple negative breast cancer cell lines have a distinct nucleolar proteome signature in comparison to non-TNBC breast cancer cell lines.
Project description:We propose to definitively characterise the somatic genetics of triple negative breast cancer through generation of comprehensive catalogues of somatic mutations in breast cancer cases by high coverage genome sequencing coupled with integrated transcriptomic and methylation analyses.