Genomics

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Comparative Transcriptomics of Triple Negative Breast Cancer Stem Cells and Differentiated Tumor Cells Identifies Teneurin-4 as a Potential Therapeutic Target


ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is insensitive to the most effective therapies for other breast cancers, including endocrine and Her2-directed therapies, thus the lack of specific treatments prompted us to search for new TNBC-associated molecules to be used as targets for cancer therapy. As patients with TNBC usually experience a quicker relapse and metastatic progression compared to other breast cancer subtypes, we hypothesized that cancer stem cells (CSC) could play a central role in TNBC. We thus directed our focus on genes differentially expressed between CSC and differentiated cancer cells of TNBC cell lines. RESULTS: We established tumorsphere cultures from mouse and human mammary cancer cell lines to enrich the CSC population. RNA-Seq was used to identify differences in gene expression between tumorspheres and their monolayer counterparts. Seventy-four transcripts were found up-regulated in the tumorspheres, while forty-two genes were down-regulated. Enrichment analysis of biological processes showed an up-regulation in genes involved in regulation of apoptosis in tumorspheres, and a down-regulation in genes involved in lipid metabolism and cell cycle regulation. By focusing on up-regulated genes coding for cell membrane-associated proteins, we selected Teneurin-4 (TENM4) as a candidate for further studies. Meta-analysis of publicly available datasets revealed that TENM4 mRNA is up-regulated in both lobular and ductal invasive carcinoma specimens compared to normal breast, and that high expression of TENM4 in TNBC patients shows a trend of correlation with a shorter relapse-free survival. 4T1 tumorspheres treated with a siRNA specific to TENM4 showed a decrease in TENM4 mRNA and protein levels, which was reflected by a significant impairment of tumorsphere-forming ability. TENM4 silencing also led to a decrease in Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) phosphorylation, which has been previously linked to CSC biology, thus strengthening the possible link between TENM4 and a CSC-like phenotype. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, our results indicate that the stem-like status of TNBC cells is accompanied by altered regulation of apoptosis, cell cycle and lipid metabolism pathways. Furthermore, we identified TENM4 as a potential novel player in CSC biology, and its potential role as a novel target to improve the outcome of TNBC patients in the future.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE109798 | GEO | 2018/01/30

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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