Role of FBXO31 in regulating MAPK-mediated genotoxic stress response and cancer cell survival

Abstract

Esophageal cancer is the third most common digestive tract malignancy. Along with surgery, genotoxic drugs (e.g. cisplatin) and radiotherapy are the mainstays of treatment for this disease. Environmental factors and environmental stress-induced responses contribute to esophageal tumorigenesis and chemoresistance. Studying key molecules in stress-induced signal pathway can help unravel the underlying mechanisms and discover rational therapeutic targets.

Cyclin D1 is DNA damage response protein. Genotoxic stress induces rapid cyclin D1 degradation and the molecules mediating this response are cell-type dependent. The first part of this study investigated the changes of cyclin D1 expression in response to genotoxic stress in immortalized esophageal epithelial cells, which are experimental models commonly used to study the early events of cancer development. The results showed that cyclin D1 underwent rapid proteasomal degradation before p53-induced p21 accumulation, which substantiates that cyclin D1 plays a role in eliciting cell cycle arrest very early in the DNA damage response. FBXO31 and FBX4, two F-box proteins previously reported to mediate cyclin D1 degradation, were found to be accumulated and unchanged, respectively, after ionizing irradiation in immortalized esophageal epithelial cells and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) cell lines. Yet, knockdown of FBXO31 did not rescue rapid cyclin D1 degradation upon UV or ionizing irradiation. This led to the hypothesis that accumulation of FBXO31 may have novel functions beyond mediating cyclin D1 degradation in cells responding to genotoxic stress.

The second part of this study explored the function of FBXO31 in genotoxic stress response. The accumulation of FBXO31 in cancer cells after exposure to various genotoxic stresses was found to coincide with p38 deactivation, giving the clue that FBXO31 may negatively regulate this important pathway. Further studies revealed that knockdown of FBXO31 resulted in sustained activation of stress-activated MAPKs (SAPKs) p38 and JNK, as well as increase in UV-induced cell apoptosis, whereas overexpression of FBXO31 had opposite effects. The inhibitory role of FBXO31 on SAPK activation and apoptosis was confirmed by shRNA rescue experiments. Consistent with the observed anti-apoptotic effect, soft agar, colony formation and in vivo xenograft experiments showed that FBXO31 had oncogenic function in ESCC. Moreover, in vitro and in vivo results showed that knockdown of FBXO31 could sensitize ESCC cells to cisplatin treatment.

The mechanism underlying the inhibition of SAPKs by FBXO31 was investigated in the third part of this study. Co-immunoprecipitation results showed that FBXO31 could interact with MKK6 (a p38 activator), but not p38, JNK1, or other MAP2Ks. FBXO31 was found to be co-localized with MKK6 in the cytoplasm. Mapping of interaction domains of FBXO31 revealed that aa 115-240 and aa 351-475 were responsible for binding to MKK6. Further study found that binding of FBXO31 to MKK6 could facilitate the K48-linked polyubiquitination and degradation of MKK6.

Taken together, the results of this study showed that FBXO31 accumulation upon genotoxic stress can promote the degradation of MKK6 via K48-linked ubiquitination, thereby inhibiting SAPK activation and protecting cancer cells from genotoxic stress-induced apoptosis. FBXO31 may be a potentially useful therapeutic target to overcome chemoresistance in cancer therapy.