Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0178874 (tumor progression)
 40,807 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Epigenetic biomarkers are emerging as determinants of breast cancer prognosis. Breast cancer cells display unique alterations in major cellular metabolic pathways and it is becoming widely recognized that enzymes that regulate epigenetic alterations are metabolically sensitive. In this study, we used microarray data from the GEO database to compare gene expression for regulators of metabolism and epigenetic alterations among non-invasive epithelial (MCF-7, MDA-MB-361, and T-47D) and invasive mesenchymal (MDA-MB-231, Hs-578T, and BT-549) breast cancer cell lines. The expression of genes, including GLS1, GFPT2, LDHA, HDAC9, MYST2, and SUV420H2, was assessed using RT-PCR. There was differential expression between epithelial and mesenchymal cell lines. MYST2 and SUV420H2 regulate the levels of the epigenetic biomarkers histone H4 lysine 16 acetylation (H4K16ac) and histone H4 lysine 20 trimethylation (H4K20me3), respectively. Reduced amounts of H4K16ac and H4K20me3 correlated with lower levels of MYST2 and SUV420H2 in mesenchymal cells and, along with reduced amounts of histone H3 lysine 9 acetylation (H3K9ac), were found to distinguish epithelial from mesenchymal cells. In addition, both GLS1 and GFPT2 play roles in glutamine metabolism and were observed to be more highly expressed in mesenchymal cell lines, and when glutamine and glutamate levels reported in the NCI-60 metabolomics dataset were compared, the ratio of glutamate/glutamine was found to be higher in mesenchymal cells. Blocking the conversion of glutamine to glutamate using an allosteric inhibitor, Compound 968, against GLS1, increased H4K16ac in T-47D and MDA-MB-231 cells, linking glutamine metabolism to a particular histone modification in breast cancer. These findings support the concept that metabolically sensitive histone modifications and corresponding histone modifying enzymes can be used as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for breast cancer. It also further emphasizes the importance of glutamine metabolism in tumor progression and that inhibitors of cellular metabolic pathways may join histone deacetylase inhibitors as a form of epigenetic therapy.
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PMID:An in vitro investigation of metabolically sensitive biomarkers in breast cancer progression. 2210 7

The genome-wide loss of histone H4 lysine 20 tri-methylation (H4K20me3) is observed in multiple types of cancer, including breast tumors. Since H4K20me3 is preferentially targeted to repetitive elements in the pericentromeric and telomeric heterochromatin and plays a role in chromatin integrity, the pathological effects of disrupted H4K20me3 in tumors have been attributed to genomic instability. However, in this report, we show that loss of H4K20me3 modulates gene expression profiles, leading to increased cell invasion. Reduced H4K20me3 levels in tumor cells are often accompanied by a decrease in the expression of the H4K20-specific methyltransferase, SUV420H2. Exogenous delivery of SUV420H2 into MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells induced selective and specific changes in the expression of cancer-related genes. One of the most downregulated genes in response to SUV420H2 expression was the Src substrate, tensin-3, a focal adhesion protein that contributes to cancer cell migration. Depletion of tensin-3 suppressed breast cancer cell invasiveness. Furthermore, silencing of tensin-3 was associated with enrichment of H4K20me3 immediately upstream of the tensin-3 transcription start site, suggesting that the loss of H4K20me3 in tumor cells induced the expression of cancer-promoting genes. These findings connect the loss of H4K20me3 with tumor progression, through the transcriptional activation of cancer-promoting genes.
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PMID:SUV420H2 suppresses breast cancer cell invasion through down regulation of the SH2 domain-containing focal adhesion protein tensin-3. 2581 62