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Senescence-associated reprogramming promotes cancer stemness

Authors :
Yong Yu
Inês Am Barbosa
Katharina Pardon
Andreas Trumpp
Dimitri Belenki
Hinrich Gronemeyer
Dorothy N. Y. Fan
Jan Dörr
Marco A. Mendoza-Parra
Maja Milanovic
Lora Dimitrova
Maurice Reimann
Marlen Metzner
Zhen Zhao
Tamara Kanashova
Dido Lenze
Clemens A. Schmitt
J. Henry M. Däbritz
Soyoung Lee
Michael Hummel
Johannes Zuber
Bernd Dörken
Gunnar Dittmar
Charité - UniversitätsMedizin = Charité - University Hospital [Berlin]
Divison of Stem Cells and Cancer
German Cancer Research Center - Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum [Heidelberg] (DKFZ)
Institut de génétique et biologie moléculaire et cellulaire (IGBMC)
Université Louis Pasteur - Strasbourg I-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Institut für Pathologie [Berlin]
Max Delbrück Center
Source :
Nature, Nature, Nature Publishing Group, 2018, 553 (7686), pp.96-100. ⟨10.1038/nature25167⟩
Publication Year :
2018
Publisher :
HAL CCSD, 2018.

Abstract

Cellular senescence is a stress-responsive cell-cycle arrest program that terminates the further expansion of (pre-)malignant cells. Key signalling components of the senescence machinery, such as p16(INK4a), p21(CIP1) and p53, as well as trimethylation of lysine 9 at histone H3 (H3K9me3), also operate as critical regulators of stem-cell functions (which are collectively termed 'stemness'). In cancer cells, a gain of stemness may have profound implications for tumour aggressiveness and clinical outcome. Here we investigated whether chemotherapy-induced senescence could change stem-cell-related properties of malignant cells. Gene expression and functional analyses comparing senescent and non-senescent B-cell lymphomas from Eμ-Myc transgenic mice revealed substantial upregulation of an adult tissue stem-cell signature, activated Wnt signalling, and distinct stem-cell markers in senescence. Using genetically switchable models of senescence targeting H3K9me3 or p53 to mimic spontaneous escape from the arrested condition, we found that cells released from senescence re-entered the cell cycle with strongly enhanced and Wnt-dependent clonogenic growth potential compared to virtually identical populations that had been equally exposed to chemotherapy but had never been senescent. In vivo, these previously senescent cells presented with a much higher tumour initiation potential. Notably, the temporary enforcement of senescence in p53-regulatable models of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and acute myeloid leukaemia was found to reprogram non-stem bulk leukaemia cells into self-renewing, leukaemia-initiating stem cells. Our data, which are further supported by consistent results in human cancer cell lines and primary samples of human haematological malignancies, reveal that senescence-associated stemness is an unexpected, cell-autonomous feature that exerts its detrimental, highly aggressive growth potential upon escape from cell-cycle blockade, and is enriched in relapse tumours. These findings have profound implications for cancer therapy, and provide new mechanistic insights into the plasticity of cancer cells.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
00280836 and 14764679
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Nature, Nature, Nature Publishing Group, 2018, 553 (7686), pp.96-100. ⟨10.1038/nature25167⟩
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....5693bfb1cf0313dd752edd8c15b9dce4
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25167⟩