PHAROH lncRNA regulates Myc translation in hepatocellular carcinoma via sequestering TIAR
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, United States
- University of Navarra, Spain
- Ionis Pharmaceutials, United States
Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver malignancy, is one of the most lethal forms of cancer. We identified a long non-coding RNA, Gm19705, that is over-expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma and mouse embryonic stem cells. We named this RNA Pluripotency and Hepatocyte Associated RNA Overexpressed in HCC, or PHAROH. Depletion of PHAROH impacts cell proliferation and migration, which can be rescued by ectopic expression of PHAROH. RNA-seq analysis of PHAROH knockouts revealed that a large number of genes with decreased expression contain a Myc motif in their promoter. MYC is decreased at the protein level, but not the mRNA level. RNA-antisense pulldown identified nucleolysin TIAR, a translational repressor, to bind to a 71-nt hairpin within PHAROH, sequestration of which increases MYC translation. In summary, our data suggest that PHAROH regulates MYC translation by sequestering TIAR and as such represents a potentially exciting diagnostic or therapeutic target in hepatocellular carcinoma.
Data availability
RNA-seq data has been uploaded to GEO: GSE167316
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PHAROH lncRNA regulates c-Myc translation in hepatocellular carcinoma via sequestering TIARNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE167316.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Cancer Institute (5PO1CA013106-Project 3)
- David L Spector
National Cancer Institute (5F31CA220997)
- Allen T Yu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Animal experimental protocols were approved (CEEA 062-16) and performed according to the guidelines of the Ethics Committee for Animal Testing of the University of Navarra.
Human subjects: The Human Research Review Committee of the University of Navarra (CEI 47/2015) approved the study and human samples were provided by the Biobank of the University of Navarra. The biobank obtained an informed consent and consent to publish from each patient and codified samples were provided to the researchers. The study protocol conformed to the ethical guidelines of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki. Samples were processed following standard operating procedures approved by the Ethical and Scientific Committees. Liver samples from healthy patients were collected from individuals with normal or minimal changes in the liver at surgery of digestive tumors or from percutaneous liver biopsy performed because of mild alterations of liver function. Samples for cirrhotic liver and HCC were obtained from patients undergoing partial hepatectomy and/or liver transplantation.
Copyright
© 2021, Yu 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.
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PHAROH lncRNA regulates Myc translation in hepatocellular carcinoma via sequestering TIAR
eLife 10:e68263.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68263
Further reading
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- Cancer Biology
Background:
Cervical adenocarcinoma (ADC) is more aggressive compared to other types of cervical cancer (CC), such as squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). The tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) and tumor heterogeneity are recognized as pivotal factors in cancer progression and therapy. However, the disparities in TIME and heterogeneity between ADC and SCC are poorly understood.
Methods:
We performed single-cell RNA sequencing on 11 samples of ADC tumor tissues, with other 4 SCC samples served as controls. The immunochemistry and multiplexed immunofluorescence were conducted to validate our findings.
Results:
Compared to SCC, ADC exhibited unique enrichments in several sub-clusters of epithelial cells with elevated stemness and hyper-malignant features, including the Epi_10_CYSTM1 cluster. ADC displayed a highly immunosuppressive environment characterized by the enrichment of regulatory T cells (Tregs) and tumor-promoting neutrophils. The Epi_10_CYSTM1 cluster recruits Tregs via ALCAM-CD6 signaling, while Tregs reciprocally induce stemness in the Epi_10_CYSTM1 cluster through TGFβ signaling. Importantly, our study revealed that the Epi_10_CYSTM1 cluster could serve as a valuable predictor of lymph node metastasis for CC patients.
Conclusions:
This study highlights the significance of ADC-specific cell clusters in establishing a highly immunosuppressive microenvironment, ultimately contributing to the heightened aggressiveness and poorer prognosis of ADC compared to SCC.
Funding:
Funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82002753; 82072882; 81500475) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2021JJ40324; 2022JJ70103).
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- Cancer Biology
Most human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) are not infiltrated with cytotoxic T cells and are highly resistant to immunotherapy. Over 90% of PDAC have oncogenic KRAS mutations, and phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3Ks) are direct effectors of KRAS. Our previous study demonstrated that ablation of Pik3ca in KPC (KrasG12D; Trp53R172H; Pdx1-Cre) pancreatic cancer cells induced host T cells to infiltrate and completely eliminate the tumors in a syngeneic orthotopic implantation mouse model. Now, we show that implantation of Pik3ca−/− KPC (named αKO) cancer cells induces clonal enrichment of cytotoxic T cells infiltrating the pancreatic tumors. To identify potential molecules that can regulate the activity of these anti-tumor T cells, we conducted an in vivo genome-wide gene-deletion screen using αKO cells implanted in the mouse pancreas. The result shows that deletion of propionyl-CoA carboxylase subunit B gene (Pccb) in αKO cells (named p-αKO) leads to immune evasion, tumor progression, and death of host mice. Surprisingly, p-αKO tumors are still infiltrated with clonally enriched CD8+ T cells but they are inactive against tumor cells. However, blockade of PD-L1/PD1 interaction reactivated these clonally enriched T cells infiltrating p-αKO tumors, leading to slower tumor progression and improve survival of host mice. These results indicate that Pccb can modulate the activity of cytotoxic T cells infiltrating some pancreatic cancers and this understanding may lead to improvement in immunotherapy for this difficult-to-treat cancer.
