ELK-1 ubiquitination status and transcriptional activity are modulated independently of F-Box protein FBXO25.

The mitogen-responsive, ETS-domain transcription factor ELK-1 stimulates the expression of immediate early genes at the onset of the cell cycle and participates in early developmental programming. ELK-1 is subject to multiple levels of posttranslational control, including phosphorylation, SUMOylation, and ubiquitination. Recently, removal of monoubiquitin from the ELK-1 ETS domain by the Ubiquitin Specific Protease USP17 was shown to augment ELK-1 transcriptional activity and promote cell proliferation. Here we have used coimmunoprecipitation experiments, protein turnover and ubiquitination assays, RNA-interference and gene expression analyses to examine the possibility that USP17 acts antagonistically with the F-box protein FBXO25, an E3 ubiquitin ligase previously shown to promote ELK-1 ubiquitination and degradation. Our data confirm that FBXO25 and ELK-1 interact in HEK293T cells and that FBXO25 is active toward Hand1 and HAX1, two of its other candidate substrates. However, our data indicate that FBXO25 neither promotes ubiquitination of ELK-1 nor impacts on its transcriptional activity and suggest that an E3 ubiquitin ligase other than FBXO25 regulates ELK-1 ubiquitination and function.

Fine-tuning of FOXO3A in cHL as a survival mechanism and a hallmark of abortive plasma cell differentiation.

We recently found that FOXO1 repression contributes to the oncogenic program of classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). Interestingly, FOXO3A, another member of the FOXO family, was reported to be expressed in the malignant Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg cells of cHL at higher levels than in non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtypes. We thus aimed to investigate mechanisms responsible for the maintenance of FOXO3A as well as the potential role of FOXO3A in cHL. Here, we show that high FOXO3A levels in cHL reflect a B-cell-differentiation-specific pattern. In B cells, FOXO3A expression increases during the process of centroblast to plasma cell (PC) differentiation. FOXO3A levels in cHL were found higher than in germinal center B cells, but lower than in terminally differentiated PCs. This intermediate FOXO3A expression in cHL might manifest the "abortive PC differentiation" phenotype. This assumption was further corroborated by the finding that overexpression of FOXO3A in cHL cell lines induced activation of the master PC transcription factor PRDM1α. As factors attenuating FOXO3A expression in cHL, we identified MIR155 and constitutive activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase. Finally, we demonstrate the importance of FOXO3A expression in cHL using an RNA interference approach. We conclude that tightly regulated expression of FOXO3A contributes to the oncogenic program and to the specific phenotype of cHL.

Tight regulation of FOXO1 is essential for maintenance of B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The FOXO1 transcription factor plays an essential role in the regulation of proliferation and survival programs at early stages of B-cell differentiation. Here, we show that tightly regulated FOXO1 activity is essential for maintenance of B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (BCP-ALL). Genetic and pharmacological inactivation of FOXO1 in BCP-ALL cell lines produced a strong antileukemic effect associated with CCND3 downregulation. Moreover, we demonstrated that CCND3 expression is critical for BCP-ALL survival and that overexpression of CCND3 protected BCP-ALL cell lines from growth arrest and apoptosis induced by FOXO1 inactivation. Most importantly, pharmacological inhibition of FOXO1 showed antileukemia activity on several primary, patient-derived, pediatric ALL xenografts with effective leukemia reduction in the hematopoietic, lymphoid, and central nervous system organ compartments, ultimately leading to prolonged survival without leukemia reoccurrence in a preclinical in vivo model of BCP-ALL. These results suggest that repression of FOXO1 might be a feasible approach for the treatment of BCP-ALL.

FOXO1 repression contributes to block of plasma cell differentiation in classical Hodgkin lymphoma.

The survival of classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) cells depends on activation of NF-κB, JAK/STAT, and IRF4. Whereas these factors typically induce the master regulator of plasma cell (PC) differentiation PRDM1/BLIMP-1, levels of PRDM1 remain low in cHL. FOXO1, playing a critical role in normal B-cell development, acts as a tumor suppressor in cHL, but has never been associated with induction of PC differentiation. Here we show that FOXO1 directly upregulates the full-length isoform PRDM1α in cHL cell lines. We also observed a positive correlation between FOXO1 and PRDM1 expression levels in primary Hodgkin-Reed-Sternberg cells. Further, we show that PRDM1α acts as a tumor suppressor in cHL at least partially by blocking MYC. Here we provide a link between FOXO1 repression and PRDM1α downregulation in cHL and identify PRDM1α as a tumor suppressor in cHL. The data support a potential role for FOXO transcription factors in normal PC differentiation.

Physiological levels of the PTEN-PI3K-AKT axis activity are required for maintenance of Burkitt lymphoma.

In addition to oncogenic MYC translocations, Burkitt lymphoma (BL) depends on the germinal centre (GC) dark zone (DZ) B cell survival and proliferation programme, which is characterized by relatively low PI3K-AKT activity. Paradoxically, PI3K-AKT activation facilitates MYC-driven lymphomagenesis in mice, and it has been proposed that PI3K-AKT activation is essential for BL. Here we show that the PI3K-AKT activity in primary BLs and BL cell lines does not exceed that of human non-neoplastic tonsillar GC DZ B cells. BLs were not sensitive to AKT1 knockdown, which induced massive cell death in pAKThigh DLBCL cell lines. Likewise, BL cell lines show low sensitivity to pan-AKT inhibitors. Moreover, hyper-activation of the PI3K-AKT pathway by overexpression of a constitutively active version of AKT (myrAKT) or knockdown of PTEN repressed the growth of BL cell lines. This was associated with increased AKT phosphorylation, NF-κB activation, and downregulation of DZ genes including the proto-oncogene MYB and the DZ marker CXCR4. In contrast to GCB-DLBCL, PTEN overexpression was tolerated by BL cell lines. We conclude that the molecular mechanisms instrumental to guarantee the survival of normal DZ B cells, including the tight regulation of the PTEN-PI3K-AKT axis, also operate in the survival/proliferation of BL.

FOXO1 Confers Maintenance of the Dark Zone Proliferation and Survival Program and Can Be Pharmacologically Targeted in Burkitt Lymphoma.

The FOXO1 transcription factor plays a central role in the proliferation and survival of B cells at several stages of differentiation. B cell malignancies, with exception of classical Hodgkin lymphoma, maintain expression of FOXO1 at levels characteristic for their non-malignant counterparts. Extensive expression profiling had revealed that Burkitt lymphoma (BL) show many characteristics of the dark zone (DZ) germinal center (GC) B cell program. Here we show that FOXO1 knockdown inhibits proliferation of human BL cell lines. The anti-proliferative effect of the FOXO1 knockdown is associated with the repression of the DZ B cell program including expression of MYB, CCND3, RAG2, BACH2, and CXCR4. In addition, the induction of signaling pathways of the light zone (LZ) program like NF-κB and PI3K-AKT was observed. Using a rescue experiment we identified downregulation of the proto-oncogene MYB as a critical factor contributing to the antiproliferative effect of FOXO1 knockdown. In an attempt to estimate the feasibility of pharmacological FOXO1 repression, we found that the small molecular weight FOXO1 inhibitor AS1842856 induces cell death and growth arrest in BL cell lines at low concentrations. Interestingly, we found that overactivation of FOXO1 also induces growth inhibition in BL cell lines, indicating the importance of a tight regulation of FOXO1 activity in BL.

FOXO1 downregulation contributes to the oncogenic program of primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma.

Recently we have shown that the transcription factor FOXO1, highly expressed in B cells, is downregulated in classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). As primary mediastinal B cell lymphoma (PMBL) has similarities with the cHL transcription program we investigated FOXO1 expression in this entity. By using immunohistochemistry we found that FOXO1 was absent or expressed at low levels in 19 of 20 primary PMBL cases. PMBL cell lines reproduce the low FOXO1 expression observed in primary cases. By analyzing gene expression profiling data we found that FOXO1 expression inversely correlated with JAK2 in PMBL cases. Targeting JAK2 activity by the small molecular weight inhibitor TG101348 resulted in upregulation of FOXO1 mRNA and protein expression in MedB-1 and U2940 cell lines, and the MYC inhibitor 10058-F4 increased FOXO1 mRNA in MedB-1 cells. Moreover, in MedB-1 cells FOXO1 expression was strongly upregulated by the inhibitor of DNA methylation 5-aza-2-deoxycytidine and by the histone deacetylase inhibitor trichostatin A. Since FOXO1 promoter was unmethylated, this effect is most likely indirect. FOXO1 activation in the FOXO1-negative Med-B1 cell line led to growth arrest and apoptosis, which was accompanied by repression of MYC and BCL2L1/BCLxL. Thus, FOXO1 repression might contribute to the oncogenic program and phenotype of PMBL.