Targeting the BRD4/FOXO3a/CDK6 Axis Sensitizes AKT Inhibition in Luminal Breast Cancer

Authors

Jingyi Liu, University of KentuckyFollow
Weijie Guo, University of KentuckyFollow
Zhibing Duan, University of KentuckyFollow
Lei Zeng, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Yadi Wu, University of KentuckyFollow
Yule Chen, University of Kentucky
Fang Tai, Southern Medical University, China
Yifan Wang, University of KentuckyFollow
Yiwei Lin, University of KentuckyFollow
Qiang Zhang, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Yanling He, Southern Medical University, China
Jiong Deng, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Rachel L. Stewart, University of KentuckyFollow
Chi Wang, University of KentuckyFollow
Pengnian Charles Lin, National Cancer Institute - Frederick
Saghi Ghaffari, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
B. Mark Evers, University of KentuckyFollow
Suling Liu, Fudan University, China
Ming-Ming Zhou, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Binhua P. Zhou, University of KentuckyFollow
Jian Shi, University of KentuckyFollow

Abstract

BRD4 assembles transcriptional machinery at gene super-enhancer regions and governs the expression of genes that are critical for cancer progression. However, it remains unclear whether BRD4-mediated gene transcription is required for tumor cells to develop drug resistance. Our data show that prolonged treatment of luminal breast cancer cells with AKT inhibitors induces FOXO3a dephosphorylation, nuclear translocation, and disrupts its association with SirT6, eventually leading to FOXO3a acetylation as well as BRD4 recognition. Acetylated FOXO3a recognizes the BD2 domain of BRD4, recruits the BRD4/RNAPII complex to the CDK6 gene promoter, and induces its transcription. Pharmacological inhibition of either BRD4/FOXO3a association or CDK6 significantly overcomes the resistance of luminal breast cancer cells to AKT inhibitors in vitro and in vivo. Our study reports the involvement of BRD4/FOXO3a/CDK6 axis in AKTi resistance and provides potential therapeutic strategies for treating resistant breast cancer.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-5-2018

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Nature Communications, v. 9, article no. 5200, p. 1-17.

© The Author(s) 2018

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07258-y

Funding Information

This research was supported by the Shared Resources of the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center (P30CA177558) and University of Kentucky Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Cancer and Metabolism (P20 GM121327). This work was also supported by grants from NIH (CA125454 and CA188118 to B.P.Z., and CA87658 and CA203067 to M.M.Z.), and DoD (BC140733 to M.M.Z. and B.P.Z.). This work was also supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81672629 to J.S.; 81402434 to Y.W.; 81530075 and 81773155 to S.L.), Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, China (201707010331 to J.S.), and Basic Public Welfare Research Program of Zhejiang Province (LGF18H290003 to Y.W.).

Related Content

RNA-sequencing data are available at the GEO data repository with the accession code GSE118148. The solution structure of the BRD4-BD2 in complex with Foxo3a-K242ac/K245ac peptide and the NMR spectral data are deposited in Protein Data Bank (PDB) ID 6MNL and BioMagResBank (BMRB) ID 30373, respectively. All uncropped western blot images were presented in Supplementary Figure 6. All tumor images and source data of this study are available upon request.

Supplementary Information accompanies this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07258-y.

Repository Citation

Liu, Jingyi; Guo, Weijie; Duan, Zhibing; Zeng, Lei; Wu, Yadi; Chen, Yule; Tai, Fang; Wang, Yifan; Lin, Yiwei; Zhang, Qiang; He, Yanling; Deng, Jiong; Stewart, Rachel L.; Wang, Chi; Lin, Pengnian Charles; Ghaffari, Saghi; Evers, B. Mark; Liu, Suling; Zhou, Ming-Ming; Zhou, Binhua P.; and Shi, Jian, "Targeting the BRD4/FOXO3a/CDK6 Axis Sensitizes AKT Inhibition in Luminal Breast Cancer" (2018). Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry Faculty Publications. 151.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/biochem_facpub/151