Multiple tumor suppressors regulate a HIF-dependent negative feedback loop via ISGF3 in human clear cell renal cancer

  1. Lili Liao
  2. Zongzhi Z Liu
  3. Lauren Langbein
  4. Weijia Cai
  5. Eun-Ah Cho
  6. Jie Na
  7. Xiaohua Niu
  8. Wei Jiang
  9. Zhijiu Zhong
  10. Wesley L Cai
  11. Geetha Jagannathan
  12. Essel Dulaimi
  13. Joseph R Testa
  14. Robert G Uzzo
  15. Yuxin Wang
  16. George R Stark
  17. Jianxin Sun
  18. Stephen C Peiper
  19. Yaomin Xu  Is a corresponding author
  20. Qin Yan  Is a corresponding author
  21. Haifeng Yang  Is a corresponding author
  1. Thomas Jefferson University, United States
  2. Yale University, United States
  3. Mayo Clinic, United States
  4. The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China
  5. Fox Chase Cancer Center, United States
  6. Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, United States
  7. Vanderbilt University, United States

Abstract

Whereas VHL inactivation is a primary event in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), the precise mechanism(s) of how this interacts with the secondary mutations in tumor suppressor genes, including PBRM1, KDM5C/JARID1C, SETD2, and/orBAP1, remains unclear. Gene expression analyses reveal that VHL, PBRM1, or KDM5C share a common regulation of interferon response expression signature. Loss of HIF2a, PBRM1, or KDM5C in VHL-/-cells reduces the expression of interferon stimulated gene factor 3 (ISGF3), a transcription factor that regulates the interferon signature. Moreover, loss of SETD2 or BAP1 also reduces the ISGF3 level. Finally, ISGF3 is strongly tumor-suppressive in a xenograft model as its loss significantly enhances tumor growth. Conversely, reactivation of ISGF3 retards tumor growth by PBRM1-deficient ccRCC cells. Thus after VHL inactivation, HIF induces ISGF3, which is reversed by the loss of secondary tumor suppressors, suggesting that this is a key negative feedback loop in ccRCC.

Data availability

Microarray data have been deposited inn GEO under the accession code GSE108229.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Lili Liao

    Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Zongzhi Z Liu

    Department of Pathology, Yale University, New Haven, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Lauren Langbein

    Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3007-5287
  4. Weijia Cai

    Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Eun-Ah Cho

    Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Jie Na

    Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Xiaohua Niu

    Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Wei Jiang

    Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Zhijiu Zhong

    Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Wesley L Cai

    Department of Pathology, Yale University, New Haven, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Geetha Jagannathan

    Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  12. Essel Dulaimi

    Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  13. Joseph R Testa

    Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  14. Robert G Uzzo

    Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  15. Yuxin Wang

    Department of Cancer Biology, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  16. George R Stark

    Department of Cancer Biology, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  17. Jianxin Sun

    Department of Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  18. Stephen C Peiper

    Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  19. Yaomin Xu

    Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, United States
    For correspondence
    yaomin.xu@vanderbilt.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  20. Qin Yan

    Department of Pathology, Yale University, New Haven, United States
    For correspondence
    qin.yan@yale.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4077-453X
  21. Haifeng Yang

    Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States
    For correspondence
    Haifeng.yang@jefferson.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0892-9055

Funding

National Cancer Institute (R01 CA155015)

  • Haifeng Yang

National Cancer Institute (P30CA056036)

  • Haifeng Yang

Department of Defence (W81XWH-16-1-0326)

  • Qin Yan

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All animal experiments were conducted in accordance with protocol 01462-935A approved by the IACUC of Thomas Jefferson University and protocol 2015-11286 approved by the IACUC of Yale University.

Copyright

© 2018, Liao et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 3,034
    views
  • 442
    downloads
  • 25
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Lili Liao
  2. Zongzhi Z Liu
  3. Lauren Langbein
  4. Weijia Cai
  5. Eun-Ah Cho
  6. Jie Na
  7. Xiaohua Niu
  8. Wei Jiang
  9. Zhijiu Zhong
  10. Wesley L Cai
  11. Geetha Jagannathan
  12. Essel Dulaimi
  13. Joseph R Testa
  14. Robert G Uzzo
  15. Yuxin Wang
  16. George R Stark
  17. Jianxin Sun
  18. Stephen C Peiper
  19. Yaomin Xu
  20. Qin Yan
  21. Haifeng Yang
(2018)
Multiple tumor suppressors regulate a HIF-dependent negative feedback loop via ISGF3 in human clear cell renal cancer
eLife 7:e37925.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.37925

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.37925

Further reading

    1. Cancer Biology
    2. Evolutionary Biology
    Susanne Tilk, Judith Frydman ... Dmitri A Petrov
    Research Article

    In asexual populations that don’t undergo recombination, such as cancer, deleterious mutations are expected to accrue readily due to genome-wide linkage between mutations. Despite this mutational load of often thousands of deleterious mutations, many tumors thrive. How tumors survive the damaging consequences of this mutational load is not well understood. Here, we investigate the functional consequences of mutational load in 10,295 human tumors by quantifying their phenotypic response through changes in gene expression. Using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM), we find that high mutational load tumors up-regulate proteostasis machinery related to the mitigation and prevention of protein misfolding. We replicate these expression responses in cancer cell lines and show that the viability in high mutational load cancer cells is strongly dependent on complexes that degrade and refold proteins. This indicates that the upregulation of proteostasis machinery is causally important for high mutational burden tumors and uncovers new therapeutic vulnerabilities.