RESUMO
Melanoma susceptibility differs significantly in male versus female populations. Low levels of androgen receptor (AR) in melanocytes of the two sexes are accompanied by heterogeneous expression at various stages of the disease. Irrespective of expression levels, genetic and pharmacological suppression of AR activity in melanoma cells blunts proliferation and induces senescence, while increased AR expression or activation exert opposite effects. AR down-modulation elicits a shared gene expression signature associated with better patient survival, related to interferon and cytokine signaling and DNA damage/repair. AR loss leads to dsDNA breakage, cytoplasmic leakage, and STING activation, with AR anchoring the DNA repair proteins Ku70/Ku80 to RNA Pol II and preventing RNA Pol II-associated DNA damage. AR down-modulation or pharmacological inhibition suppresses melanomagenesis, with increased intratumoral infiltration of macrophages and, in an immune-competent mouse model, cytotoxic T cells. AR provides an attractive target for improved management of melanoma independent of patient sex.
Assuntos
Carcinogênese/genética , Proliferação de Células/genética , Melanoma/genética , Receptores Androgênicos/genética , Transdução de Sinais/genética , Animais , Carcinogênese/patologia , Linhagem Celular Tumoral , Dano ao DNA/genética , Reparo do DNA/genética , Regulação para Baixo/genética , Feminino , Regulação Neoplásica da Expressão Gênica/genética , Humanos , Masculino , Melanoma/patologia , Camundongos , Camundongos Endogâmicos C57BL , Camundongos Endogâmicos NOD , Camundongos SCID , RNA Polimerase II/genéticaRESUMO
Hyperpolarization-activated cyclic-nucleotide gated channel (HCN) proteins are important regulators of both neuronal and cardiac excitability. Among the 4 HCN isoforms, HCN4 is known as a pacemaker channel, because it helps control the periodicity of contractions in vertebrate hearts. Although the physiological role of HCN4 channel has been studied in adult mammalian hearts, an earlier role during embryogenesis has not been clearly established. Here, we probe the embryonic roles of HCN4 channels, providing the first characterization of the expression profile of any of the HCN isoforms during Xenopus laevis development and investigate the consequences of altering HCN4 function on embryonic pattern formation. We demonstrate that both overexpression of HCN4 and injection of dominant-negative HCN4 mRNA during early embryogenesis results in improper expression of key patterning genes and severely malformed hearts. Our results suggest that HCN4 serves to coordinate morphogenetic control factors that provide positional information during heart morphogenesis in Xenopus.