Abstract
Abstract Background. Despite the identification of MYCN-amplification as an adverse prognostic marker in neuroblastoma, no drugs that target MYCN have yet been developed. An alternative approach is to identify genes synthetically lethal to MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma. Through a whole genome shRNA screen, we have previously identified transcription factor AP4 (TFAP4) as a synthetic lethal gene of MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma. Silencing of TFAP4, both in vitro and in vivo inhibited the growth of MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma. TFAP4 has previously reported to repress neuronal specific genes in non-neuronal cells (Kim et al, 2006). Here, we investigate the function of TFAP4 in inhibiting differentiation of MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma. Methods: Master regulators specifically associated to MYCN amplified patients were identified by MARINA (Master Regulator Inference algorithm). TFAP4 expression was measured by real-time PCR, Western blot and immunohistochemistry. GAP43 expression was detected by Western blot. Gene expression changes after silencing of TFAP4 or retinoic acid treatment was determined by RNAseq. Results: TFAP4 was identified as a master regulator specifically in MYCN amplified neuroblastoma patients in both NCI-TARGET dataset and a published GEO dataset (Kocak et al, 2013). We determined that TFAP4 is a direct target of MYCN and TFAP4 expression was highly correlated with Stage 4, MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma in both patient datasets. Neuronal markers TUBB3 and GAP43 expression were inversely correlated with TFAP4 expression in TARGET (P = 9.77e-03 and P = 7.78e-08). Silencing TFAP4 in MYCN amplified cells induced a differentiated phenotype, as shown by markedly increased the number of neurites, and an increase in the neuronal differentiation marker GAP43. Forty hours after silencing TFAP4, we observed 415 genes that were significantly up-regulated and 457 genes down-regulated (P<0.01). Genes with increased expression were enriched for gene ontology terms associated with neuronal activity. Gene signature of TFAP4 also showed a strong correlation with the treatment signature of the differentiation agent retinoic acid in SKNDZ. Conclusions. We demonstrated that TFAP4 is an important downstream effector of MYCN, that inhibits the neuronal differentiatin of MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma. This may provide novel targets for the treatment of neuroblastoma. Citation Format: Shuobo Zhang, Gonzalo Lopez, Jiyang Yu, Jose Silva, Angela Kadenhe-Chiweshe, Andrea Califano, Darrell Yamashiro. TFAP4 inhibits differentiation of MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 2083. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-2083
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