Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UNIPROT:P51532 (transcriptional activator)
 6,546 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Here we report that T-cell lymphoma cells carrying the NPM-ALK fusion protein (ALK(+) TCL) frequently express the cell-stimulatory receptor ICOS. ICOS expression in ALK(+) TCL is moderate and strictly dependent on the expression and enzymatic activity of NPM-ALK. NPM-ALK induces ICOS expression via STAT3, which triggers the transcriptional activity of the ICOS gene promoter. In addition, STAT3 suppresses the expression of miR-219 that, in turn, selectively inhibits ICOS expression. ALK(+) TCL cell lines display extensive DNA methylation of the CpG island located within intron 1, the putative enhancer region, of the ICOS gene, whereas cutaneous T-cell lymphoma cell lines, which strongly express ICOS, show no methylation of the island. Treatment of the ALK(+) TCL cell lines with DNA methyltransferase inhibitor reversed the CpG island methylation and augmented the expression of ICOS mRNA and protein. Stimulation of the ICOS receptor with anti-ICOS antibody or ICOS ligand-expressing B cells markedly enhanced proliferation of the ALK(+) TCL cells. These results demonstrate that NPM-ALK, acting through STAT3 as the gene transcriptional activator, induces the expression of ICOS, a cell growth promoting receptor. These data also show that the DNA methylation status of the intronic CpG island affects transcriptional activity of the ICOS gene and, consequently, modulates the concentration of the expressed ICOS protein.
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PMID:Oncogenic tyrosine kinase NPM-ALK induces expression of the growth-promoting receptor ICOS. 2176 24

The best-understood mechanism by which EZH2 exerts its oncogenic function is through polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2)-mediated gene repression, which requires its histone methyltransferase activity. However, small-molecule inhibitors of EZH2 that selectively target its enzymatic activity turn out to be potent only for lymphoma cells with EZH2-activating mutation. Intriguingly, recent discoveries, including ours, have placed EZH2 into the category of transcriptional coactivators and thus raised the possibility of noncanonical signaling pathways. However, it remains unclear how EZH2 switches to this catalytic independent function. In the current study, using natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (NKTL) as a disease model, we found that phosphorylation of EZH2 by JAK3 promotes the dissociation of the PRC2 complex leading to decreased global H3K27me3 levels, while it switches EZH2 to a transcriptional activator, conferring higher proliferative capacity of the affected cells. Gene expression data analysis also suggests that the noncanonical function of EZH2 as a transcriptional activator upregulates a set of genes involved in DNA replication, cell cycle, biosynthesis, stemness, and invasiveness. Consistently, JAK3 inhibitor was able to significantly reduce the growth of NKTL cells, in an EZH2 phosphorylation-dependent manner, whereas various compounds recently developed to inhibit EZH2 methyltransferase activity have no such effect. Thus, pharmacological inhibition of JAK3 activity may provide a promising treatment option for NKTL through the novel mechanism of suppressing noncanonical EZH2 activity.
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PMID:EZH2 phosphorylation by JAK3 mediates a switch to noncanonical function in natural killer/T-cell lymphoma. 2753 96