MCM3 upregulation confers endocrine resistance in breast cancer and is a predictive marker of diminished tamoxifen benefit.

Resistance to endocrine therapy in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer is a major clinical problem with poorly understood mechanisms. There is an unmet need for prognostic and predictive biomarkers to allow appropriate therapeutic targeting. We evaluated the mechanism by which minichromosome maintenance protein 3 (MCM3) influences endocrine resistance and its predictive/prognostic potential in ER+ breast cancer. We discovered that ER+ breast cancer cells survive tamoxifen and letrozole treatments through upregulation of minichromosome maintenance proteins (MCMs), including MCM3, which are key molecules in the cell cycle and DNA replication. Lowering MCM3 expression in endocrine-resistant cells restored drug sensitivity and altered phosphorylation of cell cycle regulators, including p53(Ser315,33), CHK1(Ser317), and cdc25b(Ser323), suggesting that the interaction of MCM3 with cell cycle proteins is an important mechanism of overcoming replicative stress and anti-proliferative effects of endocrine treatments. Interestingly, the MCM3 levels did not affect the efficacy of growth inhibitory by CDK4/6 inhibitors. Evaluation of MCM3 levels in primary tumors from four independent cohorts of breast cancer patients receiving adjuvant tamoxifen mono-therapy or no adjuvant treatment, including the Stockholm tamoxifen (STO-3) trial, showed MCM3 to be an independent prognostic marker adding information beyond Ki67. In addition, MCM3 was shown to be a predictive marker of response to endocrine treatment. Our study reveals a coordinated signaling network centered around MCM3 that limits response to endocrine therapy in ER+ breast cancer and identifies MCM3 as a clinically useful prognostic and predictive biomarker that allows personalized treatment of ER+ breast cancer patients.

Acetylation dynamics of human nuclear proteins during the ionizing radiation-induced DNA damage response.

Genotoxic insults, such as ionizing radiation (IR), cause DNA damage that evokes a multifaceted cellular DNA damage response (DDR). DNA damage signaling events that control protein activity, subcellular localization, DNA binding, protein-protein interactions, etc. rely heavily on time-dependent posttranslational modifications (PTMs). To complement our previous analysis of IR-induced temporal dynamics of nuclear phosphoproteome, we now identify a range of human nuclear proteins that are dynamically regulated by acetylation, and predominantly deacetylation, during IR-induced DDR by using mass spectrometry-based proteomic approaches. Apart from cataloging acetylation sites through SILAC proteomic analyses before IR and at 5 and 60 min after IR exposure of U2OS cells, we report that: (1) key components of the transcriptional machinery, such as EP300 and CREBBP, are dynamically acetylated; (2) that nuclear acetyltransferases themselves are regulated, not on the protein abundance level, but by (de)acetylation; and (3) that the recently reported p53 co-activator and methyltransferase MLL3 is acetylated on five lysines during the DDR. For selected examples, protein immunoprecipitation and immunoblotting were used to assess lysine acetylation status and thereby validate the mass spectrometry data. We thus present evidence that nuclear proteins, including those known to regulate cellular functions via epigenetic modifications of histones, are regulated by (de)acetylation in a timely manner upon cell's exposure to genotoxic insults. Overall, these results present a resource of temporal profiles of a spectrum of protein acetylation sites during DDR and provide further insights into the highly dynamic nature of regulatory PTMs that help orchestrate the maintenance of genome integrity.

Phosphoproteomic analysis of cells treated with longevity-related autophagy inducers.

Macroautophagy is a self-cannibalistic process that enables cells to adapt to various stresses and maintain energy homeostasis. Additionally, autophagy is an important route for turnover of misfolded proteins and damaged organelles, with important implications in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and aging. Resveratrol and spermidine are able to induce autophagy by affecting deacetylases and acetylases, respectively, and have been found to extend the life-span of model organisms. With the aim to reveal the signaling networks involved in this drug-induced autophagic response, we quantified resveratrol and spermidine-induced changes in the phosphoproteome using SILAC and mass spectrometry. The data were subsequently analyzed using the NetworKIN algorithm to extract key features of the autophagy-responsive kinase-substrate network. We found that two distinct sequence motifs were highly responsive to resveratrol and spermidine and that key proteins modulating the acetylation, phosphorylation, methylation and ubiquitination status were affected by changes in phosphorylation during the autophagic response. Essential parts of the apoptotic signaling network were subjected to post-translational modifications during the drug-induced autophagy response, suggesting potential crosstalk and balancing between autophagy and apoptosis. Additionally, we predicted cellular signaling networks affected by resveratrol and spermidine using a computational framework. Altogether, these results point to a profound crosstalk between distinct networks of post-translational modifications and provide a resource for future analysis of autophagy and cell death.

The antipsychotic drug chlorpromazine enhances the cytotoxic effect of tamoxifen in tamoxifen-sensitive and tamoxifen-resistant human breast cancer cells.

Tamoxifen resistance is a major clinical problem in the treatment of estrogen receptor alpha-positive breast tumors. It is, at present, unclear what exactly causes tamoxifen resistance. For decades, chlorpromazine has been used for treating psychotic diseases, such as schizophrenia. However, the compound is now also recognized as a multitargeting drug with diverse potential applications, for example, it has antiproliferative properties and it can reverse resistance toward antibiotics in bacteria. Furthermore, chlorpromazine can reverse multidrug resistance caused by overexpression of P-glycoprotein in cancer cells. In this study, we have investigated the effect of chlorpromazine on tamoxifen response of human breast cancer cells. We found that chlorpromazine worked synergistically together with tamoxifen with respect to reduction of cell growth and metabolic activity, both in the antiestrogen-sensitive breast cancer cell line, MCF-7, and in a tamoxifen-resistant cell line, established from the MCF-7 cells. Tamoxifen-sensitive and tamoxifen-resistant cells were killed equally well by combined treatment with chlorpromazine and tamoxifen. This synergistic effect could be prevented by addition of estrogen, suggesting that chlorpromazine enhances the effect of tamoxifen through an estrogen receptor-mediated mechanism. To investigate this putative mechanism, we applied biophysical techniques to simple model membranes in the form of unilamellar liposomes of well-defined composition and found that chlorpromazine interacts strongly with lipid bilayers of different composition leading to increased permeability. This implies that chlorpromazine can change influx properties of membranes hence suggesting that chlorpromazine may be a promising chemosensitizing compound for enhancing the cytotoxic effect of tamoxifen.