Reversing chemorefraction in colorectal cancer cells by controlling mucin secretion
- Vall d'Hebron Institut de Recerca, Spain
- Institut Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques, Spain
- The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Spain
Abstract
15% of colorectal cancers (CRC) cells exhibit a mucin hypersecretory phenotype, which is suggested to provide resistance to immune surveillance and chemotherapy. We now formally show that colorectal cancer cells build a barrier to chemotherapeutics by increasing mucins' secretion. We show that low levels of KChIP3, a negative regulator of mucin secretion (Cantero-Recasens et al., 2018), is a risk factor for CRC patients' relapse in subset of untreated tumours. Our results also reveal that cells depleted of KChIP3 are four times more resistant (measured as cell viability and DNA damage) to chemotherapeutics 5-Fluorouracil plus Irinotecan (5-FU+iri.) compared to control cells, whereas KChIP3 overexpressing cells are 10 times more sensitive to killing by chemotherapeutics. Similar increase in tumour cell death is observed upon chemical inhibition of mucin secretion by the sodium/calcium exchanger (NCX) blockers (Mitrovic et al., 2013). Finally, sensitivity of CRC patient-derived organoids to 5-FU+iri increases 40-fold upon mucin secretion inhibition. Reducing mucin secretion thus provides a means to control chemoresistance of mucinous colorectal cancer cells and other mucinous tumours.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed are included in the manuscript
Article and author information
Author details
Gerard Cantero-Recasens
Funding
Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España (BFU2013-44188-P)
- Vivek Malhotra
Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI19-00013)
- Lluis Espinosa
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Cantero-Recasens 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
-
- 2,625
- views
-
- 354
- downloads
-
- 7
- 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)
Reversing chemorefraction in colorectal cancer cells by controlling mucin secretion
eLife 11:e73926.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73926
Further reading
-
- Cell Biology
- Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
Conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs) can serve as a nutritional intervention to regulate quality, function, and fat infiltration in skeletal muscles, but the specific cytological mechanisms remain unknown. Here, we applied single-nucleus RNA-sequencing (snRNA-seq) to characterize the cytological mechanism of CLAs regulates fat infiltration in skeletal muscles based on pig models. We investigated the regulatory effects of CLAs on cell populations and molecular characteristics in pig muscles and found CLAs could promote the transformation of fast glycolytic myofibers into slow oxidative myofibers. We also observed three subpopulations including SCD+/DGAT2+, FABP5+/SIAH1+, and PDE4D+/PDE7B+ subclusters in adipocytes and CLAs could increase the percentage of SCD+/DGAT2+ adipocytes. RNA velocity analysis showed FABP5+/SIAH1+ and PDE4D+/PDE7B+ adipocytes could differentiate into SCD+/DGAT2+ adipocytes. We further verified the differentiated trajectory of mature adipocytes and identified PDE4D+/PDE7B+ adipocytes could differentiate into SCD+/DGAT2+ and FABP5+/SIAH1+ adipocytes by using high intramuscular fat (IMF) content Laiwu pig models. The cell-cell communication analysis identified the interaction network between adipocytes and other subclusters such as fibro/adipogenic progenitors (FAPs). Pseudotemporal trajectory analysis and RNA velocity analysis also showed FAPs could differentiate into PDE4D+/PDE7B+ preadipocytes and we discovered the differentiated trajectory of preadipocytes into mature adipocytes. Besides, we found CLAs could promote FAPs differentiate into SCD+/DGAT2+ adipocytes via inhibiting c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) signaling pathway in vitro. This study provides a foundation for regulating fat infiltration in skeletal muscles by using nutritional strategies and provides potential opportunities to serve pig as an animal model to study human fat infiltrated diseases.
-
- Cancer Biology
- Cell Biology
The most common primary malignancy of the liver, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is a heterogeneous tumor entity with high metastatic potential and complex pathophysiology. Increasing evidence suggests that tissue mechanics plays a critical role in tumor onset and progression. Here, we show that plectin, a major cytoskeletal crosslinker protein, plays a crucial role in mechanical homeostasis and mechanosensitive oncogenic signaling that drives hepatocarcinogenesis. Our expression analyses revealed elevated plectin levels in liver tumors, which correlated with poor prognosis for HCC patients. Using autochthonous and orthotopic mouse models we demonstrated that genetic and pharmacological inactivation of plectin potently suppressed the initiation and growth of HCC. Moreover, plectin targeting potently inhibited the invasion potential of human HCC cells and reduced their metastatic outgrowth in the lung. Proteomic and phosphoproteomic profiling linked plectin-dependent disruption of cytoskeletal networks to attenuation of oncogenic FAK, MAPK/Erk, and PI3K/Akt signatures. Importantly, by combining cell line-based and murine HCC models, we show that plectin inhibitor plecstatin-1 (PST) is well-tolerated and potently inhibits HCC progression. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that plectin-controlled cytoarchitecture is a key determinant of HCC development and suggests that pharmacologically induced disruption of mechanical homeostasis may represent a new therapeutic strategy for HCC treatment.
