Journal
ONCOTARGET
Volume 6, Issue 30, Pages 28895-28910Publisher
IMPACT JOURNALS LLC
DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.5000
Keywords
Ewing sarcoma; EWS/FLI1; PI3K pathway; promoter analysis
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Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation [31003A_144177]
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [31003A_144177] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)
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Ewing sarcoma (ES) is the second most frequent bone cancer in childhood and is characterized by the presence of the balanced translocation t(11;22)(q24;q12) in more than 85% of cases, generating a dysregulated transcription factor EWS/FLI1. This fusion protein is an essential oncogenic component of ES development which is necessary for tumor cell maintenance and represents an attractive therapeutic target. To search for modulators of EWS/FLI1 activity we screened a library of 153 targeted compounds and identified inhibitors of the PI3K pathway to directly modulate EWS/FLI1 transcription. Surprisingly, treatment of four different ES cell lines with BEZ235 resulted in down regulation of EWS/FLI1 mRNA and protein by similar to 50% with subsequent modulation of target gene expression. Analysis of the EWS/FLI1 promoter region (-2239/+67) using various deletion constructs identified two 14bp minimal elements as being important for EWS/FLI1 transcription. We identified SP1 as modulator of EWS/FLI1 gene expression and demonstrated direct binding to one of these regions in the EWS/FLI1 promoter by EMSA and ChIP experiments. These results provide the first insights on the transcriptional regulation of EWS/FLI1, an area that has not been investigated so far, and offer an additional molecular explanation for the known sensitivity of ES cell lines to PI3K inhibition.
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