Abstract
Estrogen receptors (ERs) regulate the transcription of genes involved in breast cancer cell proliferation, invasion and metastasis. In addition to ligand concentration, phosphorylation and coactivator/corepressor levels control ER-dependent transcription. In this study, we used MCF-7 breast cancer sublines with variable levels of the steroid receptor coactivator 1 (SRC-1) to investigate the importance of coactivator levels in basal and estrogen-inducible expression of SDF-1α/CXCL12, cathepsin D and cMyc. Basal expression of SDF-1α and cMyc but not of cathepsin D was substantially lower in a MCF-7 subline lacking SRC-1 ((MCF-7/p2) compared with MCF-7 sublines expressing SRC-1 (MCF-7/p1 and LCC2). Although estrogen efficiently induced SDF-1α in MCF-7/p1 cells, very little induction of this gene was observed in MCF-7/p2 cells. The absence of SRC-1 had no effect on estrogen-inducible expression cMyc and cathepsin D suggesting that coactivator levels determine the expression of only a subset of estrogen-regulated genes. Introduction of SRC-1, SRC-2/TIF-2 or SRC-3/AIB1 increased basal expression of SDF-1α in MCF-7/p2 cells. Consistent with the role of SDF-1α in mediating estrogen-induced proliferation, estrogen failed to increase proliferation of MCF-7/p2 cells. In matrigel invasion assays, conditioned media from MCF-7/p1 but not MCF-7/p2 cells increased invasion of cancer cells expressing metastasis-associated genes and CXCR4, the receptor for SDF-1α. These results suggest that coactivators control SDF-1α expression, which mediates estrogen-induced proliferation and invasion through autocrine and paracrine mechanisms, respectively. These results also provide a molecular explanation for recent observations linking co-overexpression of coactivators and her2/neu with poor prognosis: coactivators increase SDF-1α expression whereas her2/neu stabilize CXCR4 protein.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1706-1715 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Carcinogenesis |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2005 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank B.W.O’Malley, R.M.Evans, R.Goodman, H.E.Broxmeyer and P.Chambon, for various plasmids. This work is supported by the National Cancer Institute of Grant R01CA89153 (to H.N.). H.N. is a Marian J.Morrison investigator in Breast Cancer Research.