Pluto Bioinformatics

GSE131120: ANILLIN REGULATES BREAST CANCER CELL MIGRATION, GROWTH AND METASTASIS BY NON-CANONICAL MECHANISMS INVOLVING CONTROL OF CELL STEMNESS AND DIFFERENTIATION

Bulk RNA sequencing

Breast cancer metastasis is driven by profound remodeling of the intracellular cytoskeleton enabling efficient cell migration. Anillin is a unique cytoskeletal scaffolding protein that regulates actin filaments, microtubules, septin polymers and Rho GTPases. Anillin is markedly overexpressed in breast cancer and other solid cancer, however its functions in cancer cells remain poorly understood. This study aims at investigating the roles of anillin in regulating breast cancer cell migration, invasion and metastasis. CRISPR/Cas9 technology was used to deplete anillin in highly metastatic MDA-MB-231and BT549 cells and to overexpress it in poorly invasive MCF10AneoT cells. These loss-of-function and gain-of-function studies demonstrated that anillin is necessary and sufficient to accelerate migration, invasion and anchorage-independent growth of breast cancer cells in vitro. Furthermore, loss of anillin markedly attenuated both primary tumor growth and metastasis of breast cancer in vivo. In breast cancer cells, anillin was localized in the nucleus, however anillin knockout affected the cytoplasmic/cortical events such as the organization of actin cytoskeleton and cell-matrix adhesions. This was accompanied by a global transcriptional reprogramming of anillin-depleted breast cancer cells that resulted in suppression of their stemness and induction of the mesenchymal to epithelial trans-differentiation. Such trans-differentiation was manifested by upregulation of basal keratins along with increased expression of E-cadherin and P-cadherin. Knockdown of E-cadherin reversed attenuated migration and invasion of anillin-deficient cells. Our study provides the first evidence that anillin plays causal roles in breast cancer development and metastasis in vitro and in vivo and unravels novel functions of anillin in regulating breast cancer stemness and differentiation. SOURCE: Mikhail Dozmorov (mdozmorov@vcu.edu) - Virginia Commonwealth University