Snail Determines the Therapeutic Response to mTOR Kinase Inhibitors by Transcriptional Repression of 4E-BP1

Authors

Jun Wang, University of Kentucky
Qing Ye, University of KentuckyFollow
Yanan Cao, University of KentuckyFollow
Yubin Guo, University of KentuckyFollow
Xiuping Huang, University of KentuckyFollow
Wenting Mi, University of Kentucky
Side Liu, Southern Medical University, China
Chi Wang, University of KentuckyFollow
Hsin-Sheng Yang, University of KentuckyFollow
Binhua P. Zhou, University of KentuckyFollow
B. Mark Evers, University of KentuckyFollow
Qing-Bai She, University of KentuckyFollow

Abstract

Loss of 4E-BP1 expression has been linked to cancer progression and resistance to mTOR inhibitors, but the mechanism underlying 4E-BP1 downregulation in tumors remains unclear. Here we identify Snail as a strong transcriptional repressor of 4E-BP1. We find that 4E-BP1 expression inversely correlates with Snail level in cancer cell lines and clinical specimens. Snail binds to three E-boxes present in the human 4E-BP1 promoter to repress transcription of 4E-BP1. Ectopic expression of Snail in cancer cell lines lacking Snail profoundly represses 4E-BP1 expression, promotes cap-dependent translation in polysomes, and reduces the anti-proliferative effect of mTOR kinase inhibitors. Conversely, genetic and pharmacological inhibition of Snail function restores 4E-BP1 expression and sensitizes cancer cells to mTOR kinase inhibitors by enhancing 4E-BP1-mediated translation-repressive effect on cell proliferation and tumor growth. Our study reveals a critical Snail-4E-BP1 signaling axis in tumorigenesis, and provides a rationale for targeting Snail to improve mTOR-targeted therapies.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-20-2017

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Nature Communications, v. 8, article no. 2207, p. 1-15.

© The Author(s) 2017

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/s41467-017-02243-3

Funding Information

This work was supported by grants from NIH R01CA175105 and NIH R01CA203257 (Q.-B.S.). We also acknowledge use of the UK Flow Cytometry & Cell Sorting core facility, supported in part by the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Markey Cancer Center NCI Center Core Support Grant (P30CA177558).

Related Content

Data availability: All data generated or analyzed during this study are available within the Article and Supplementary Files, or available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Supplementary Information accompanies this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467- 017-02243-3.

Repository Citation

Wang, Jun; Ye, Qing; Cao, Yanan; Guo, Yubin; Huang, Xiuping; Mi, Wenting; Liu, Side; Wang, Chi; Yang, Hsin-Sheng; Zhou, Binhua P.; Evers, B. Mark; and She, Qing-Bai, "Snail Determines the Therapeutic Response to mTOR Kinase Inhibitors by Transcriptional Repression of 4E-BP1" (2017). Markey Cancer Center Faculty Publications. 87.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/markey_facpub/87