Extracellular signal-regulated kinase mediates chromatin rewiring and lineage transformation in lung cancer
- British Columbia Cancer Agency, Canada
- University of Calgary, Canada
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, United States
Abstract
Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is neuroendocrine in origin and rarely contains mutations in the MAPK pathway. Likewise, non-SCLC (NSCLC) that transform to SCLC concomitantly with development of therapy resistance downregulate MAPK signaling, suggesting an inverse relationship between pathway activation and lineage state. To test this, we activated MAPK in SCLC through expression of mutant KRAS or EGFR, which revealed suppression of the neuroendocrine differentiation via ERK. We found that ERK induces expression of ETS factors that mediate transformation into a NSCLC-like state. ATAC-seq demonstrated ERK-driven changes in chromatin accessibility at putative regulatory regions and global chromatin rewiring at neuroendocrine and ETS transcriptional targets. Further, induction of ETS factors and suppression of neuroendocrine differentiation were dependent on histone acetyltransferases CBP/p300. Overall, we describe how the ERK-CBP/p300-ETS axis promotes a lineage shift between neuroendocrine and non-neuroendocrine phenotypes and provide rationale for the disruption of this program during transformation-driven resistance to targeted therapy.
Data availability
Gene expression data has been deposited to GEO under the accession code GSE160482. ATAC seq data has been deposited to GEO under the accession code GSE160204
Article and author information
Author details
William W Lockwood
Funding
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (PJT-148725)
- William W Lockwood
Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (Scholar Award)
- William W Lockwood
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (New Investigator Award)
- William W Lockwood
British Columbia Lung Association (Research Grant)
- Yusuke Inoue
- William W Lockwood
Terry Fox Research Institute (New Investigator Award)
- William W Lockwood
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (PJT-156278)
- Marco Gallo
Canada Research Chairs (Brain Cancer Epigenomics (Tier 2))
- Marco Gallo
Alberta Health Services (Clinician Investigator Program fellowship)
- Ana Nikolic
Alberta Innovates (Fellowship)
- Ana Nikolic
Japanese Respiratory Society (Lilly Oncology Fellowship Program Award)
- Yusuke Inoue
Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (Fellowship)
- Yusuke Inoue
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Maureen E Murphy, The Wistar Institute, United States
Version history
- Received: January 13, 2021
- Accepted: June 11, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 14, 2021 (version 1)
- Accepted Manuscript updated: June 18, 2021 (version 2)
- Version of Record published: August 4, 2021 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2021, Inoue et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 5,071
- views
-
- 539
- downloads
-
- 16
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Extracellular signal-regulated kinase mediates chromatin rewiring and lineage transformation in lung cancer
eLife 10:e66524.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66524
Further reading
-
- Cancer Biology
- Cell Biology
High-throughput vertebrate animal model systems for the study of patient-specific biology and new therapeutic approaches for aggressive brain tumors are currently lacking, and new approaches are urgently needed. Therefore, to build a patient-relevant in vivo model of human glioblastoma, we expressed common oncogenic variants including activated human EGFRvIII and PI3KCAH1047R under the control of the radial glial-specific promoter her4.1 in syngeneic tp53 loss-of-function mutant zebrafish. Robust tumor formation was observed prior to 45 days of life, and tumors had a gene expression signature similar to human glioblastoma of the mesenchymal subtype, with a strong inflammatory component. Within early stage tumor lesions, and in an in vivo and endogenous tumor microenvironment, we visualized infiltration of phagocytic cells, as well as internalization of tumor cells by mpeg1.1:EGFP+ microglia/macrophages, suggesting negative regulatory pressure by pro-inflammatory cell types on tumor growth at early stages of glioblastoma initiation. Furthermore, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene targeting of master inflammatory transcription factors irf7 or irf8 led to increased tumor formation in the primary context, while suppression of phagocyte activity led to enhanced tumor cell engraftment following transplantation into otherwise immune-competent zebrafish hosts. Altogether, we developed a genetically relevant model of aggressive human glioblastoma and harnessed the unique advantages of zebrafish including live imaging, high-throughput genetic and chemical manipulations to highlight important tumor-suppressive roles for the innate immune system on glioblastoma initiation, with important future opportunities for therapeutic discovery and optimizations.
-
- Cancer Biology
- Cell Biology
Establishing a zebrafish model of a deadly type of brain tumor highlights the role of the immune system in the early stages of the disease.
