Project description:Neuroblastoma (NB) cells exhibit a complex spectrum of pathway changes associated with oncogene activation, chromosome events, tumor micro-environment and super-enhancer states. So far, elucidating which pharmaceutical compounds could modulate the activation level of each known pathway in NB cells has not been feasible. We treated 2 patient-derived xenograft (PDX) NB cell lines with different chemical compounds, at 3 different doses (IC50, IC20, and IC10) and 2 time-points (6 and 24h). The whole-transcriptome of the treated cells was analyzed by a cost-effective DRUG-Seq method. Using factor analysis and supervised machine learning, the data was used to build a model that predicts the NB-specific outcome of 19,000+ drugs studied in other (non-NB) cell lines in several drug profiling databases (LINCS, CMap, DepMap).
Project description:Neuroblastoma is the most common solid tumour in childhood and prognosis remains poor for high-risk cases despite the use of multimodal treatment. Analysis of public drug sensitivity data showed neuroblastoma lines to be particularlysensitive to indisulam, a molecular glue that selectively targets the RNA splicing factor RBM39 for proteosomal degradation via DCAF15-E3-ubiquitin ligase. In neuroblastoma models indisulam induced rapid loss of RBM39, accumulation of splicing errors and growth inhibition in a DCAF15-dependent manner. Integrative analysis of RNAseq and proteomics data highlighted a particular disruption to cell cycle and metabolism. Metabolic profiling demonstrated metabolome perturbations and mitochondrial dysfunction resulting from indisulam. Complete tumour without relapse was observed in both xenografts and the Th-MYCN transgenic model of neuroblastoma after indisulam treatment, with RBM39 loss confirmed in vivo. Our data imply that dual targeting of metabolism and RNA splicing with anti-cancer sulfonamides such as indisulam is promising therapeutic approach for high-risk neuroblastoma.
Project description:Neuroblastoma is a pediatric cancer of the developing sympathetic nervous system. High-risk neuroblastoma patients typically undergo an initial remission in response to treatment, followed by recurrence of aggressive tumors that have become refractory to further treatment. The need for biomarkers that can select patients not responding well to therapy in an early phase is therefore needed. In this study, we used next generation sequencing technology to determine the expression profiles in high-risk neuroblastoma cell lines established before and after therapy. Using partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) with least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and leave-one-out cross-validation, we identified a panel of 55 messenger RNAs and 17 long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) which were significantly altered in the expression between cell lines isolated from primary and recurrent tumors. From a neuroblastoma patient cohort, we found 20 of the 55 protein-coding genes to be differentially expressed in patients with unfavorable compared with favorable outcome. We further found a twofold increase or decrease in hazard ratios in these genes when comparing patients with unfavorable and favorable outcome. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed that these genes were involved in proliferation, differentiation and regulated by Polycomb group (PcG) proteins. Of the 17 lncRNAs, 3 upregulated (NEAT1, SH3BP5-AS1, NORAD) and 3 downregulated lncRNAs (DUBR, MEG3, DHRS4-AS1) were also found to be differentially expressed in favorable compared with unfavorable outcome. Moreover, using expression profiles on both miRNAs and mRNAs in the same cohort of cell lines, we found 13 downregulated and 18 upregulated experimentally observed miRNA target genes targeted by miR-21, -424 and -30e, -29b, -138, -494, -181a, -34a, -29b, respectively. The advantage of analyzing biomarkers in a clinically relevant neuroblastoma model system enables further studies on the effect of individual genes upon gene perturbation. In summary, this study identified several genes, which may aid in the prediction of response to therapy and tumor recurrence.
Project description:Purpose: Neuroblastoma is characterized by substantial clinical heterogeneity. Despite intensive treatment, the survival rates of high-risk neuroblastoma patients are still disappointingly low. Somatic chromosomal copy number aberrations have been shown to be associated with patient outcome, particularly in low- and intermediate-risk neuroblastoma patients. To improve outcome prediction in high-risk neuroblastoma, we aimed to design a prognostic classification method based on copy number aberrations. Methods: In an international collaboration, normalized high-resolution DNA copy number data (arrayCGH and SNP arrays) from 556 high-risk neuroblastomas obtained at diagnosis were collected from nine collaborative groups and segmented using the same method. We applied logistic and Cox proportional hazard regression to identify genomic aberrations associated with poor outcome. Results: In this study, we identified two types of copy number aberrations that are associated with extremely poor outcome. (i) Distal 6q losses were detected in 5.9% of patients and were associated with a ten-year survival probability of only 3.4%. (ii) Amplifications of regions not encompassing the MYCN locus were detected in 18% of patients and were associated with a ten-year survival probability of only 5.8%. Conclusion: Using a unique large copy number dataset of high-risk neuroblastoma cases, we identified a small subset of high-risk neuroblastoma patients with extremely low survival probability that might be eligible for inclusion in clinical trials of new therapeutics. The amplicons may also nominate alternative treatments that target the amplified genes.
Project description:Network-based analysis of neuroblastoma samples from two large cohorts identified master regulator proteins controlling the transcriptional state of three high-risk molecular subtypes. In particular, a TEAD4-MYCN positive feedback loop emerged as the core regulatory motif of a small protein module presiding over implementation and stability of the subtype associated with MYCN amplification. Specifically, MYCN transcriptionally activates TEAD4, which in turn activates MYCN both transcriptionally and post-translationally. The resulting MYCN-TEAD4 positive feedback loop plays a critical role in maintaining aberrant activity of a 10-protein regulatory module that causally regulates the transcriptional state of this subtype. Consistently, loss of TEAD4 activity induces core module activity collapse and abrogates neuroblastoma cell viability in vitro and in vivo, thus suggesting novel therapeutic strategies for this important childhood cancer. Study of the transcriptional control by TEAD4 and MYCN positive feedback loop using RNA-seq profiles of TEAD4 and MYCN shRNA knockdowns in neuroblastoma BE2 cells. ChIP-Seq analysis using TEAD4 antibody in BE2 cells.
Project description:Neuroblastoma is a pediatric tumor of the peripheral sympathetic nervous system with diverse clinical behaviors. Even with multimodal therapies, high-risk neuroblastoma has an unfavorable outcome irrespective of MYCN amplification, a well-established oncogenic driver in neuroblastoma pathogenesis, and its genetic heterogeneity has largely impeded efforts to correlate molecular targets with biological consequences for more effective treatment strategies. Here, using a gene expression-based approach, we identified the FDA-approved anthelmintic niclosamide as a potential anti-neuroblastoma drug. By combining the gene expression signature associated with high-risk neuroblastoma and the recurrent drug−transcript relationships inferred from up to one million perturbational gene expression profiles, our algorithm predicted effective therapeutic candidates by evaluating the extent to which a given compound or their combinations could ‘reverse’ the high-risk signature. Furthermore, we performed quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to validate top five candidate reverse genes which are involved in DNA replication, including cyclin A2 (CCNA2), minichromosome maintenance 10 replication initiation factor (MCM10), ERCC excision repair 6 like, spindle assembly checkpoint helicase (ERCC6L), kinesin family member 20A (KIF20A), and RuvB like AAA ATPase 1 (RUVBL1). Indeed, those five genes were downregulated in niclosamide-treated cells, indicating niclosamide suppressed DNA replication and then inhibited cell proliferation. Using cell proliferation and clonogenic assays as well as flow cytometry, we determined the cytotoxic effects of niclosamide in MYCN-amplified SK-N-DZ and non-amplified SK-N-AS cells. The results showed that niclosamide could effectively reduce not only cell proliferation and colony formation but also trigger cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Moreover, we conducted human tumor xenografts in a nude mice model to evaluate the in vivo efficacy of niclosamide and found that it significantly suppressed tumor growth and prolonged survival rate, but doesn’t cause organ damage and change body weight. To explore the molecular mechanism of niclosamide, stable-isotope dimethyl labeling strategy for quantitative proteomics was performed on both cell-based or xenograft-based MYCN-amplified SK-N-DZ and MYCN-nonamplified SK-N-AS models. We confirmed niclosamide not only mediated the function of mitochondrial electron transport chain but also the other functions in high risk neuroblastoma cell lines and xenografts. The results suggest that our developed expression-based strategy is useful for drug discovery and provides the possibility of repurposing the anthelminthic drug niclosamide for treating high-risk neuroblastoma therapy.
Project description:RNA expression profiles of 105 primary neuroblastomas derived from customized 4 x 44k oligonucleotide microarrays (Agilent Technologies). These profiles are part of an integrative study combining genomewide epigenetic profiles with transcriptome data of the same neuroblastoma cohort. Tumors were derived from 40 low-risk, 9 intermediate-risk and 56 high-risk patients. Transcription profiles of 105 primary neuroblastomas derived from customized 4 x 44k oligonucleotide microarrays (Agilent Technologies)
Project description:We performed array CGH in high-risk neuroblastoma tumors in order to compare genome aberrations with expression of small non-coding RNAs.