Role of EGR1 transcription factor in the control of self-renewal of glioblastoma initiating cells

Le glioblastome est la tumeur cérébrale de mauvais pronostic la plus fréquente et la plus agressive. Les traitements actuels combinent la chirurgie à la radio thérapie et la chimiothérapie. Cependant ces traitements sont peu efficaces. Le taux de récidive est élevé et la survie moyenne est de 15 mois.La récidive s'explique en partie par la présence de cellules initiatrices de glioblastomes (CIG). Ces cellules possèdent des propriétés de cellules souches adultes. Elles s'auto-renouvellent en maintenant un pool de cellules tumorales et se différencient en différents types cellulaires. Elles sont aussi résistantes aux thérapies par l'activation de mécanismes d'élimination des molécules destinées à les détruire. L'engagement des CIGs vers un état tumoral différencié diminue fortement leur potentiel tumorigénique les rendant plus vulnérables.Le facteur de transcription EGR1 est impliqué dans des processus biologiques comme la prolifération et la différenciation. Dans les CIG l'expression d'EGR1 est anormalement élevée. Ce niveau diminue lorsque les cellules se différencient. L'expression d'EGR1 est donc corrélée avec un état souche suggérant sa contribution dans la régulation de la prolifération des CIG ou dans le maintien de cet état.Mon objectif est de caractériser le rôle d'EGR1 dans la régulation de l'état proliférant des CIG.Nous avons démontré l'implication d'EGR1 dans une cascade de régulation impliquant le mir18a* et les gènes SHH et GLI1. Il contribue ainsi à l'autorenouvellement, à la prolifération et au maintien de l'état souche des CiGs. De plus en régulant directement le gène PDGFa, EGR1 entretient ce système régulatoire par une deuxième boucle moléculaire.Glioblastoma is the most commun and agressive cerebral tumor. The current treatments combine surgery with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. However these treatments are poor effective. The relapse is frequent and the rate survival is less than 18 months.The relapse is in part due to the presence of glioblastoma initiating cells (GIC). The cells have stem cell properties. They can self-renew to maintain a pool of tumor cells and they can differentiate in different kind of tumor cells. They are also able to resist to the therapies by activating mechanisms of drug efflux. The commitment of GIC toward a differentiated tumor state decreases strongly their tumorigenic potential.EGR1 transcription factor is involved in many biological processes such as proliferation and differentiation. In the GIC EGR1 expression is abnormally elevated. This level decreases when cells are differentiated. EGR1 expression is strongly correlated with stem state suggesting its contribution in the proliferation regulation of GIC or in the maintenance of this state.My aim is to characterize the role of EGR1 in the regulation of proliferating state of the GIC.We have demonstrated the involvement of EGR1 in the pathway involving the mir18a* and the genes SHH and GLI1. It contributes so to the self-renewal, to the proliferation and to the maintenance of the stem state of GIC. In addition by directly regulating the gene PDGFa EGR1 maintains this system by a second molecular loop

A guide to epigenetics in leukaemia stem cells.

Publication status: PublishedLeukaemia stem cells (LSCs) are the critical seed for the growth of haematological malignancies, driving the clonal expansion that enables disease initiation, relapse and often resistance. Specifically, they display inherent phenotypic and epigenetic plasticity resulting in complex heterogenic diseases. In this review, we discuss the key principles of deregulation of epigenetic processes that shape this disease evolution. We consider measures to define and quantify clonal heterogeneity, combining information from recent studies assessing mutational, transcriptional and epigenetic landscapes at single cell resolution in Myeloid Neoplasms (MN). We highlight the importance of integrating epigenetic and genetic information to better understand inter- and intra-patient heterogeneity and discuss how this understanding further informs evolution and progression trajectories and subsequent clinical response in MN. Under this topic, we also discuss efforts to identify mechanisms of resistance, by longitudinal analysis of patient samples. Finally, we highlight how we might target these aberrant epigenetic processes for better therapeutic outcomes and to potentially eradicate LSCs

Early Gene Expression Analysis in 9L Orthotopic Tumor- Bearing Rats Identifies Immune Modulation in Molecular Response to Synchrotron Microbeam Radiation Therapy

Synchrotron Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT) relies on the spatial fractionation of the synchrotron photon beam into parallel micro-beams applying several hundred of grays in their paths. Several works have reported the therapeutic interest of the radiotherapy modality at preclinical level, but biological mechanisms responsible for the described efficacy are not fully understood to date. The aim of this study was to identify the early transcriptomic responses of normal brain and glioma tissue in rats after MRT irradiation (400Gy). The transcriptomic analysis of similarly irradiated normal brain and tumor tissues was performed 6 hours after irradiation of 9 L orthotopically tumor-bearing rats. Pangenomic analysis revealed 1012 overexpressed and 497 repressed genes in the irradiated contralateral normal tissue and 344 induced and 210 repressed genes in tumor tissue. These genes were grouped in a total of 135 canonical pathways. More than half were common to both tissues with a predominance for immunity or inflammation (64 and 67 % of genes for normal and tumor tissues, respectively). Several pathways involving HMGB1, toll-like receptors, C-type lectins and CD36 may serve as a link between biochemical changes triggered by irradiation and inflammation and immunological challenge. Most immune cel

Simultaneous hyper- and hypomethylation at imprinted loci in a subset of patients with GNAS epimutations underlies a complex and different mechanism of multilocus methylation defect in pseudohypoparathyroidism type 1b.

International audienceMost patients with pseudohypoparathyroidism type 1b (PHP-1b) display a loss of imprinting (LOI) encompassing the GNAS locus resulting in PTH resistance. In other imprinting disorders, such as Russell-Silver or Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, we and others have shown that the LOI is not restricted to one imprinted locus but may affect other imprinted loci for some patients. Therefore, we hypothesized that patients with PHP-1b might present multilocus imprinting defects. We investigated, in 63 patients with PHP-1b, the methylation pattern of eight imprinted loci: GNAS, ZAC1, PEG1/MEST, ICR1, and ICR2 on chromosome 11p15, SNRPN, DLK1/GTL2 IG-DMR, and L3MBTL1. We found multilocus imprinting defects in four PHP-1b patients carrying broad LOI at the GNAS locus (1) simultaneous hypermethylation at L3MBTL1 differentially methylated region 3 (DMR3), and hypomethylation at PEG1/MEST DMR (n = 1), (2) hypermethylation at the L3MBTL1 (DMR3) (n = 1) and at the DLK1/GTL2 IG-DMR (n = 1), and (3) hypomethylation at the L3MBTL1 DMR3 (n = 1). We suggest that mechanisms underlying multilocus imprinting defects in PHP-1b differ from those of other imprinting disorders having only multilocus loss of methylation. Furthermore, our results favor the hypothesis of "epidominance", that is, the phenotype is controlled by the most severely affected imprinted locus

A Positive Feed-forward Loop Associating EGR1 and PDGFA Promotes Proliferation and Self-renewal in Glioblastoma Stem Cells

International audienceGlioblastomas are the most common primary brain tumors, highly vascularized, infiltrating, and resistant to current therapies. This cancer leads to a fatal outcome in less than 18 months. The aggressive behavior of glioblastomas, including resistance to current treatments and tumor recurrence, has been attributed to glioma stemlike/progenitor cells. The transcription factor EGR1 (early growth response 1), a member of a zinc finger transcription factor family, has been described as tumor suppressor in gliomas when ectopically overexpressed. Although EGR1 expression in human glioblastomas has been associated with patient survival, its precise location in tumor territories as well as its contribution to glioblastoma progression remain elusive. In the present study, we show that EGR1-expressing cells are more frequent in high grade gliomas where the nuclear expression of EGR1 is restricted to proliferating/progenitor cells. We show in primary cultures of glioma stemlike cells that EGR1 contributes to stemness marker expression and proliferation by orchestrating a PDGFA-dependent growth-stimulatory loop. In addition, we demonstrate that EGR1 acts as a positive regulator of several important genes, including SHH, GLI1, GLI2, and PDGFA, previously linked to the maintenance and proliferation of glioma stemlike cells

CELF2 Sustains a Proliferating/OLIG2+ Glioblastoma Cell Phenotype via the Epigenetic Repression of SOX3

International audienceGlioblastomas (GBs) are incurable brain tumors. The persistence of aggressive stem-like tumor cells after cytotoxic treatments compromises therapeutic efficacy, leading to GBM recurrence. Forcing the GBM cells to irreversibly abandon their aggressive stem-like phenotype may offer an alternative to conventional cytotoxic treatments. Here, we show that the RNA binding protein CELF2 is strongly expressed in mitotic and OLIG2-positive GBM cells, while it is downregulated in differentiated and non-mitotic cells by miR-199a-3p, exemplifying GBM intra-tumor heterogeneity. Using patient-derived cells and human GBM samples, we demonstrate that CELF2 plays a key role in maintaining the proliferative/OLIG2 cell phenotype with clonal and tumorigenic properties. Indeed, we show that CELF2 deficiency in patient-derived GSCs drastically reduced tumor growth in the brains of nude mice. We further show that CELF2 promotes TRIM28 and G9a expression, which drive a H3K9me3 epigenetic profile responsible for the silencing of the SOX3 gene. Thus, CELF2, which is positively correlated with OLIG2 and Ki67 expression in human GBM samples, is inversely correlated with SOX3 and miR-199a-3p. Accordingly, the invalidation of SOX3 in CELF2-deficient patient-derived cells rescued proliferation and OLIG2 expression. Finally, patients expressing SOX3 above the median level of expression tend to have a longer life expectancy. CELF2 is therefore a crucial target for the malignant potential of GBM and warrants attention when developing novel anticancer strategies

Kaplan-Meier representation of tumor-bearing rat survival.

<p>Intracerebral 9-irradiated (solid black line) or not (dashed grey line). MRT significantly increased the Median Survival Time of animals compared with untreated rats (33 days <i>versus</i> 19 days, log rank test: p<0.0001).</p

Validation gene set.

<p>List of the genes with significant up- or down-regulation which were selected for microarray data validation using RT-qPCR. Primer sequences for quantitative RT-qPCR are indicated in the two right-hand columns.</p

Influence of MRT on gene expression in tumor and contralateral brain tissues.

<p>a, b- Heat map showing either significant decrease or increase in mRNA expression after MRT in tumor and normal brain tissues. Colors indicate expression levels above (red) or below (green) the median value for each gene. Vertical columns indicate individual arrays and horizontal rows indicate genes. c- Venn diagrams showing the numbers of significantly increased (red) or decreased (green) genes after MRT in both tissues.</p

Validation of microarray analysis by quantitative RT-PCR on tumor tissue samples.

<p>Data were first normalized to the expression of Arpc1 and Atp5b housekeeping genes. The fold changes (±SEM) in each gene expression was calculated using the mean expression in treated (n = 6 for microarray and n = 8 to 9 for RT-qPCR) versus untreated (n = 5 for microarray and n = 7 to 10 for RT-qPCR) tumors 6 h after MRT. Fold changes are indicated below the histograms (several fold changes were available for microarray because of the presence of several probesets). All tested genes presented a significant difference between treated and untreated tissues (p<0.05; permutation t-test).</p