Project description:<p>BRCA1 mutations are a hallmark of hereditary ovarian cancer, strongly linked to deficiencies in homologous recombination (HR) DNA repair and impaired DNA replication fork protection. However, its roles in cancer progression beyond maintaining genomic integrity remain poorly understood. Through metabolomics approaches, we found BRCA1-deficiency strikingly increased choline metabolism. Loss of BRCA1 promotes choline uptake through upregulating choline transporter-like protein 4 (CTL4). BRCA1 directly binds and recruits EZH2-mediated H3K27Me3 deposition to CTL4 promoter. CTL4 was therefore overexpressed in ovarian cancer tissues with BRCA1 mutations. Furthermore, BRCA1-deficiency significantly promotes ovarian cancer invasion, while inhibition of CTL4 reverses the high metastatic potential of BRCA1-deficient ovarian cancer cells, suggesting the functionality and specificity of CTL4 as a therapeutic target. Additionally, we discovered that phosphocholine, the choline metabolite increased by CTL4 overexpression, interacted with and stabilized the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition inducer FAM3C in BRCA1-deficient ovarian cancer cells. Importantly, we identified a potent CTL4 inhibitor, DT-13, which significantly reduces choline metabolism and effectively suppresses metastasis in BRCA1-deficient ovarian cancers. Therefore, our study uncovers a mechanism underlying metastasis in BRCA1-deficient cancers and identifies CTL4 as a therapeutic target for metastatic ovarian cancer patients with BRCA1 mutations.</p>
Project description:Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer in women. Breast cancer brain metastasis is considered as an essential issue in breast cancer patients. Membrane proteins play important roles in breast cancer brain metastasis that contributes to the cell adhesion and penetration of blood-brain barrier. To achieve a deeper insight of the mechanism of breast cancer brain metastasis, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was performed to analyze the enriched membrane proteomes from six different breast cancer cell lines. Quantitative proteomic data of all cell lines were compared with MDA-MB-231BR which has the specific brain metastasis capacity. 1239 proteins were identified and 990 were quantified with more than 70% of membrane proteins in all cell lines. Each cell line can be separated apart from others in PCA. Ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA) supported the high brain metastatic ability of 231BR and suggested importance of the up-regulation of integrin proteins and down-regulation of EPHA in brain metastasis. 28 proteins were observed unique expression alteration in 231BR. The up-regulation of NPM1, hnRNP Q, hnRNP K and eIF3l and the down-regulation of TUBB4B and TUBB were observed to be associated with the brain metastasis cell line and may contributes to the breast cancer brain metastasis.