Abstract 1539: Investigating the mechanisms of tumor suppression mediated by PTEN PDZ-binding domain in a murine breast cancer model

Abstract

Abstract PTEN (Phosphatase and tensin homolog) functions as a key negative regulator of PI3K-Akt pathway through its lipid phosphatase activity. Mutations or loss of PTEN is frequently observed in brain, breast, prostate and endometrial cancer. PTEN possesses a PDZ-binding domain (PDZ-BD) at the end of its carboxyl terminus. Functionally, PDZ-BD mediates PTEN’s interactions with other PDZ domain-containing proteins, including ZO-1, PSD-95, DLG, etc, which are involved in the formation of cell junctions, post-synaptic densities, and serves as scaffolding proteins for multiple signaling complexes. However, whether the PTEN PDZ-binding domain is required to suppress tumorigenesis still remains obscure. To study the role of PTEN PDZ-BD in breast epithelial tumorigenesis, a PTEN-ΔPDZ mice lacking this domain was generated. PTEN expression level and activity of PI3K-Akt pathway are not changed in the mammary epithelial cells, indicating that PDZ-BD is dispensable for PTEN stability and negative regulation of the PI3K-Akt pathway. Further, we crossed the PTEN-ΔPDZ mice with the MMTV-PyMT breast cancer model and observed increased total tumor burden as well as higher tendency of lung metastasis in PTEN-ΔPDZ mice. This data indicates that PTEN PDZ-BD is indeed important for tumor suppression during breast cancer progression. Previously, PTEN has been reported to govern the integrity of tight junctions and apical-basal polarity of epithelial cells, which requires PTEN’s interactions with other proteins through the PDZ-BD. However, through in vitro three-dimensional culture of primary mouse mammary epithelial cells, we failed to observe any disruption of either apical-basal polarity or tight junction. Meanwhile, we investigated the alteration of the transcriptome of breast cancer tissue in PTEN-ΔPDZ mice by performing RNA-sequencing. Several enriched signaling pathways were identified by Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA), which seems to be mainly associated with cell skeleton signaling as well as signaling interaction between extracellular matrix and the cancer cell. A list of genes were validated by RT-PCR, and functional validation of these genes during the tumorigenesis in our animal model is to be carried out in the near future. This work was supported by a General Research Fund grant (#460713) from the Hong Kong University Grants Committee to AC. YM was supported by a Hong Kong PhD Fellowship (PF12-13584), and a Lo Kwee-Seong Biomedical Research Seed Fund to AC. Citation Format: Mingfei Yan, Alexander Many, Hong Guan, Penelope M. Or, Andrew M. Chan. Investigating the mechanisms of tumor suppression mediated by PTEN PDZ-binding domain in a murine breast cancer model [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1539. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-1539