Project description:Patient-derived primary HER2+ Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis (Lepto) cell lines were established. RNA-seq in various breast cancer cell lines were conducted to characterize the established cell lines. Gene expression analysis clearly indicated thatt Lepto cell lines are transcriptionally different from HER2 positive and negative metastatic breast cancer cell lines such as BT474 and MDA-MB-231 cells.
Project description:HER2 is a transmembrane receptor tyrosine kinase, which plays a key role in breast cancer due to a common genomic amplification. It is used as a marker to stratify patients in the clinic and is targeted by a number of drugs including Trastuzumab and Lapatinib. HER2 has previously been shown to translocate to the nucleus. In this study, we have explored the properties of nuclear HER2 by analysing the binding of this protein to the chromatin in three breast cancer cell lines. We find genome-wide re-programming of HER2 binding after treatment with the growth factor EGF. Over 4,000 HER2 binding sites are found in all three breast cancer cell lines, and these occur near genes involved in protein kinase activity and signal transduction. HER2 was shown to co-localise at a subset of regions demarcated by H3K4me1, a hallmark of functional enhancer elements and HER2/H3K4me1 co-bound regions were enriched near EGF regulated genes providing evidence for their functional role as regulatory elements. A chromatin bound role for HER2 was verified by independent methods, including Proximity Ligation Assay (PLA), which confirmed a close association between HER2 and H3K4me1. Interestingly, HER2 bound to the ErbB2 gene itself indicating a potential self-regulatory mechanism for HER2. Mass spectrometry analysis of the chromatin bound HER2 complex identified EGFR and STAT3 as interacting partners. These findings reveal a global role for HER2 as a chromatin-associated factor that binds to enhancer elements to elicit direct gene expression events in breast cancer cells.
Project description:Peritoneal carcinomatosis is a frequent finding in patients with primary gastric cancer, and it is associated with a poor prognosis. A major mechanism in peritoneal carcinomatosis is the dissemination of cancer cells into the abdominal cavity, mainly in diffuse gastric adenocarcinoma. The features that enable diffuse primary gastric tumours to develop peritoneal dissemination have been little investigated and are only incompletely understood. We therefore compared the gene expression profile in patients with diffuse primary gastric cancer with and without peritoneal carcinomatosis. Specimens from consecutive gastric cancer patients with and without peritoneal carcinomatosis were investigated using oligonucleotide microarrays. Keywords: Disease state analysis
Project description:Inhibition of the HER2/ERBB2 receptor is a keystone to treating HER2-positive malignancies, particularly breast cancer, but a significant fraction of HER2-positive (HER2+) breast cancers recur or fail to respond. Anti-HER2 monoclonal antibodies, like trastuzumab or pertuzumab, and ATP active site inhibitors like lapatinib, commonly lack durability because of adaptive changes in the tumor leading to resistance. HER2-directed therapy using clinically relevant drugs (trastuzumab with or without lapatinib or pertuzumab) in a 7-day clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01875666, LCCC1214) designed to examine early pharmacodynamic response to antibody-based anti-HER2 therapy showed reduced FOXA1 transcription factor expression was coincident with decreased HER2 and HER3 levels, decreased proliferation gene signatures, and increased immune gene signatures. Patient samples from this trial, when sufficient material was available, were also subjected to kinase enrichment using multiplexed kinase inhibitor bead affinity chromatography and LC-MS/MS. Strongly responsive transcriptional responses observed in a subset of patients corresponded to decreased binding of CDK1 and DDR1 by our proteomic approach. Taken together, our results highlight the importance of the immune response to anti-HER2 antibodies and suggests that inhibiting FOXA1-mediated adaptive responses in combination with HER2 targeting is a potential therapeutic strategy.
Project description:HER2 overexpression results in expansion of breast cancer stem cells (CSCs). However, the underlying mechanism remains elusive. We performed microarray analysis to obtain HER2-induced gene expression profiles in MCF10A breast epithelial cells and found that an array of inflammatory cytokine genes, including IL-1 and IL-6, are activated. Our study indicates that targeting the HER2-IL-1α-IL-6 axis provides an effective approach for eliminating of CSCs and treating HER2-positive breast cancer.
Project description:Lymph node status is a crucial predictor for the overall survival of invasive breast cancer. However, lymph node involvement is only detected in about half of HER2 positive patients. Currently, there are no biomarkers available for distinguishing small size HER2-positive breast cancers with different lymph node statuses. Thus, in the present study, we applied label-free quantitative proteomic strategy to construct plasma proteomic profiles of ten patients with small size HER2-positive breast cancers (5 patients with lymph node metastasis versus 5 patients with lymph node metastasis).
Project description:In the normal breast, PMCA2 transports calcium into milk. It is also upregulated in breast cancer cells and high tumor levels predict increased mortality in patients. In this study, we examined interactions between PMCA2 and HER2. We find that PMCA2 and a scaffolding protein, NHERF1, interact together with HER2 in specific membrane domains protruding from the surface of breast cancer cells. Knocking down PMCA2 or NHERF1 increases intracellular calcium and leads to the ubiquitination, endocytosis and degradation of HER2 after receptor activation. This is associated with reductions in HER2 expression and signaling. Manipulating PMCA2 levels regulates proliferation and apoptosis of breast cancer cells in vitro and knocking out PMCA2 dramatically inhibits the formation of hyperplasia and tumors in MMTV-Neu mice. Gene expression profiling was performed on control SKBR3 cells vs. PMCA2, NHERFR1 and HER2 knock down cells. Each group has 6 duplicates.
Project description:Hormones and growth factors accelerate cell proliferation of breast cancer cells, and these molecules are well investigated targets for drug development and application. The mechanisms of cell proliferation of breast cancers lacking estrogen receptor (ER) and HER2 have not been fully understood. The purpose of the present study is to find genes that are differentially expressed in breast cancers and that might significantly contribute to cell proliferation in these cancers. Forty tumor samples, consisting of ten each of immunohistochemically ER(+)/HER2(-), ER(+)/HER2(+), ER(-)/HER2(+), and ER(-)/HER2(-) cancer were analyzed using oligonucleotide microarrays. Both genes and tumor samples were subjected to hierarchical clustering. ER(+)/HER2(-) breast cancers and ER(-)/HER2(-) cancers tended to form a tumor cluster, but HER2 positive breast cancers were split into different tumor clusters. Significant differential expression between IHC-ER(-)/HER2(-) and other tumors was defined as having an expression level at least 2-fold higher or 2-fold lower, and analyzed by multi-step two-way ANOVA. Genes overexpressed differently in IHC-ER(-)/HER2(-) breast cancers compared to other all three types were 8 genes (FABP7, GABRP, GAL, CXCL13, CDC42EP4, C2F, FOXM1, CSDA), and underexpressed genes were nine including ITGB5, KIAA0310, MAGED2, PRSS11, SORL1, TGFB3, KRT18, CPE, BCAS1. No gene was directly related to cell proliferation such as cyclins, cyclin-dependent kinase, p53, p16, and the pRb and p21 families. We had a particular focus on a transcriptional factor E2F-5 from a list of genes overexpressed in ER negative breast cancers compared to ER positive breast cancers, and further examined. Gene amplification of E2F-5 was detected in 5/57 (8.8%) in breast cancers by FISH. No point mutation was found at the binding domain with DNA or dimerization partner of E2F-5. Immunohistochemically E2F-5 positive cancers were more frequent in ER(-)/HER2(-) cancer (14/27, 51.9%) than in other types of cancer (5/30, 16.7%) (p=0.05). E2F-5 positive cancers had higher Ki-67 labeling index (59.5%) than E2F-5 negative cancers (36.3%). E2F-5 positive cancers showed higher histological grade including metaplastic carcinoma, and worse clinical outcome with shorter disease free survival in node negative patients. In conclusion, we demonstrated that there is a population of breast cancer with overexpression of a cell cycle related transcriptional factor E2F-5. E2F-5 positive breast cancers were frequent in ER(-)/HER2(-) group with high Ki-67 labeling index, high histological grade and worse clinical outcome. Keywords: immunohistochemical phenotype
Project description:We established an acquired trastuzumab-resistant model in vitro from a trastuzumab-sensitive, HER2-amplified breast-cancer cell line. A multi-omic strategy was implemented to obtain gene, proteome, and phosphoproteome signatures associated with acquired resistance to trastuzumab in HER2-positive breast cancer, followed by validation in human clinical samples.