EML4-ALK induces cellular senescence in mortal normal human cells and promotes anchorage-independent growth in hTERT-transduced normal human cells.
BMC Cancer
; 21(1): 310, 2021 Mar 24.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33761896
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Chromosomal inversions involving anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) and echinoderm microtubule associated protein like 4 (EML4) generate a fusion protein EML4-ALK in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The understanding of EML4-ALK function can be improved by a functional study using normal human cells.METHODS:
Here we for the first time conduct such study to examine the effects of EML4-ALK on cell proliferation, cellular senescence, DNA damage, gene expression profiles and transformed phenotypes.RESULTS:
The lentiviral expression of EML4-ALK in mortal, normal human fibroblasts caused, through its constitutive ALK kinase activity, an early induction of cellular senescence with accumulated DNA damage, upregulation of p16INK4A and p21WAF1, and senescence-associated ß-galactosidase (SA-ß-gal) activity. In contrast, when EML4-ALK was expressed in normal human fibroblasts transduced with telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT), which is activated in the vast majority of NSCLC, the cells showed accelerated proliferation and acquired anchorage-independent growth ability in soft-agar medium, without accumulated DNA damage, chromosome aberration, nor p53 mutation. EML4-ALK induced the phosphorylation of STAT3 in both mortal and hTERT-transduced cells, but RNA sequencing analysis suggested that the different signaling pathways contributed to the different phenotypic outcomes in these cells. While EML4-ALK also induced anchorage-independent growth in hTERT-immortalized human bronchial epithelial cells in vitro, the expression of EML4-ALK alone did not cause detectable in vivo tumorigenicity in immunodeficient mice.CONCLUSIONS:
Our data indicate that the expression of hTERT is critical for EML4-ALK to manifest its in vitro transforming activity in human cells. This study provides the isogenic pairs of human cells with and without EML4-ALK expression.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Proteínas de Fusão Oncogênica
/
Carcinoma Pulmonar de Células não Pequenas
/
Telomerase
/
Carcinogênese
/
Neoplasias Pulmonares
Limite:
Animals
/
Female
/
Humans
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2021
Tipo de documento:
Article