Background
Snail transcription factor is a zinc finger protein that induces epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) via loss of E-cadherin expression and gain of vimentin expression, leading to increased cell migration, invasion, and tumorigenicity [
1‐
4]. This transcription factor functions as a repressor by having its zinc finger motifs bind to E-boxes along the CDH1 (E-cadherin) promoter thereby repressing transcription (Cano et al., 2000). The expression of Snail and the phenotypical changes associated with EMT have a profound impact of cell movement.
Snail overexpression has been shown in breast cancer and is associated with mammary tumor recurrence [
5]. Snail is overexpressed in prostate cancer as well and has been reported to repress Raf kinase inhibitor protein (RKIP) at the transcriptional level in metastatic prostate cancer cell lines [
6,
7]. Interestingly, androgens (dihydrotestosterone, DHT) has been shown to induce EMT in LNCaP prostate cancer cells by activating Snail, and expression levels of androgen receptor (AR) correlated inversely with androgen-mediated EMT suggesting that low levels of AR was required for the EMT phenotype [
8]. Snail can also induce neuroendocrine differentiation in LNCaP cells associated with increased paracrine cell proliferation [
9].
Maspin (mammary serine protease inhibitor) is a putative tumor suppressor that is down-regulated during breast and prostate tumor progression [
10,
11]. It is a serine protease inhibitor that has been shown to regulate urokinase (uPA) and Rac-1 Rho GTPase activities and thus lead to decreased invasion and migration [
12‐
14]. Several mechanisms have been suggested for down-regulation of maspin. Maspin suppression during cancer progression has been shown to be mediated by promoter methylation in several cancers including breast cancer [
15,
16]. Transcription factors like mutant p53 and AR have also been shown to bind to maspin promoter and mediate its inhibition in prostate cancer [
13,
17,
18]. The maspin promoter contains a negative regulatory hormone response element (HRE) that can be bound by AR leading to inhibition of maspin promoter activity [
13,
18]. Although the effect of maspin has been studied in several cancers, there is no report that correlates the expression of maspin with Snail.
Previously, we have shown that Snail promotes EMT in ARCaP and LNCaP cells associated with increased cell migration [
9,
19]. In this study, we utilized normal and prostate cancer cell lines to show that Snail overexpression in cancer correlates inversely with maspin down-regulation. We showed that Snail may inhibit maspin protein expression by directly binding maspin promoter, resulting in repression of maspin promoter activity. This may explain one of the many mechanisms by which maspin is lost during tumor progression and opens up novel therapeutic avenues by which we could essentially target Snail to re-express maspin resulting in a halt to tumor progression in prostate cancer.
Methods
Reagents and antibodies
RPMI medium and penicillin/streptomycin were purchased from VWR Int., West Chester, PA. The protease inhibitor cocktail was from Roche Molecular Biochemicals, Indianapolis, IN. Mouse monoclonal anti-human maspin antibody was from BD Transduction Laboratories, Lexington, KY. G418 and anti-human actin antibodies were from Sigma-Aldrich, Inc., St Louis, MO. Rat monoclonal anti-human Snail antibody and HRP-conjugated goat anti-rat antibody were from Cell Signaling Technology, Inc., Danvers, MA. HRP-conjugated sheep anti-mouse, sheep anti-rabbit and the Enhanced chemiluminescence (ECL) detection reagent were purchased from Amersham Biosciences, Buckingham, England. Fetal bovine serum (FBS) and Charcoal/dextran treated FBS (DCC-FBS) were from Hyclone, South Logan, UT. The pGL3-basic vector, β-galactosidase cDNA, Sac I and Bgl II restriction enzymes were purchased from Promega, Madison, WI. The Snail cDNA construct was kindly provided by Dr Mien-Chie Hung, University of Texas, Houston, TX. Control and Snail siRNA constructs were from Dharmacon, Lafayette, Co. The full length maspin promoter in pCR2.1TOPO vector were a kind gift from Dr Zhila Khalkhali-Ellis, Children’s Memorial Research Center, Chicago, Il. Lipofectamine 2000 was from Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA. The EZ-ChIP kit was purchased from Millipore Inc., Billerica, MA.
Cell culture
Normal prostate epithelial PrEC cells (Clonetics-Biowhittaker) were cultured in PrEMB medium. The human prostate cancer cell lines, LNCaP, 22Rv1 and DU145, were obtained from ATCC, Manassas, VA. The LNCaP, C4-2 human prostate cancer progression model was established as described previously [
20], while generation of C4-2 cells with stable Snail knockdown has been reported previously [
21]. Cells were grown in RPMI medium supplemented with 5% fetal bovine serum and 1X penicillin-streptomycin, at 37°C with 5% CO
2 in a humidified incubator.
Western blot analysis
Confluent cells were lysed in a modified RIPA buffer (50 mM Tris, pH 8.0, 150 mM NaCl, 0.02% NaN3, 0.1% SDS, 1% NP-40, 0.5% sodium deoxycholate) containing 1.5X protease inhibitor cocktail, 1 mM phenylmethylsufonyl fluoride, and 1 mM sodium orthovanadate. The cell lysates were centrifuged, and supernatants collected and quantified using a micro BCA assay. 25–30 μg of cell lysate was resolved on a 4-12% SDS PAGE, followed by transblotting onto nitrocellulose membrane (Schleicher & Schuell, Keene, NH). The membranes were blocked in TBS-TB (TBS with 0.05% Tween-20, 0.05% BSA) containing 5% milk, and subsequently incubated with diluted antibody in blocking buffer. After washing, the membranes were incubated in peroxidase-conjugated sheep anti-mouse, sheep anti-rabbit, or goat anti-rat IgG, washed, and visualized using ECL reagent. The membranes were stripped using stripping buffer (Pierce Biotechnology, Inc., Rockford, IL) prior to re-probing with a different antibody.
Transfection assay
Stable transfection of Snail cDNA was performed in 22Rv1 cells utilizing Lipofectamine 2000. The Snail cDNA is the constitutively active construct (6SA) that was previously utilized to induce EMT in MCF7 breast cancer cells [
22]. Briefly, 1.6 μg Snail cDNA or empty vector (Neo) was transfected into cells cultured in 12 well dishes at 90% confluency as per manufacturer’s instructions. Stable clones were selected using 800 μg/ml G418, isolated, and maintained in 400 μg/ml G418. Snail expression was verified in the clones by Western blot analysis.
RNA Isolation and RT-PCR
Total RNA was isolated from cells using the Qiagen kit as per manufacturer’s instructions, and 1 μg reverse transcribed with oligo-dT using MMLV-reverse transcriptase (Invitrogen), to generate cDNA. PCR analyses were subsequently performed with 2 μl of cDNA utilizing the primers and conditions as follows: Snail primers were 5′-GCTCGAAAGGCCTTCAACTGCAAA-3′ and 5′-AGGCAGAGGACACAGAACCAGAAA-3′, Maspin primers were 5′-CTGACAACAGTGTGAACGAC-3′ and 5′-CAAGCCTTGGGATCAATCATCT-3′, and GAPDH primers were 5′-GAAGGTGAAGGTTCGGAGTC-3′ and 5′-GAAGATGGTGATGGGATTTC-3′. The PCR conditions for Snail and GAPDH were 94°C, 2 min, 29 cycles of 94°C, 30 s; 55°C, 30 s; 72°C, 2 min, and 72°C, 7 min final extension, while for maspin it was 95° 5 min, 35 cycles of 94° 1 min, 56° 30 secs, 72° 1 min, and 72° 5 min final extension.
siRNA treatment
DU145 or 22Rv1 Snail-transfected cells at 70% confluency were transfected with 200 nM control or Snail smartpool siRNA (Dharmacon) using Dharmafect I reagent, as per manufacturer’s instructions, for 72 h prior to isolation of protein for western blot analysis.
In vitro cell migration and invasion assay
We utilized Costar 24-well plates containing a polycarbonate filter insert with an 8-μ pore size, coated with collagen I on the outside for migration or matrigel on the inside for invasion assays. 50,000 cells were plated in the upper chamber containing 0.1% fetal bovine serum (FBS) while the lower chamber contained 10% FBS. 24 h later, cells that had migrated to the bottom of the insert was fixed, stained, and either counted to obtain the relative migration or the stain solubilized with Sorenson solution and OD measured at 490 nm to obtain relative migration.
The full length maspin promoter [
18] in pCR2.1TOPO vector was double-digested with Sac I and Bgl II, ligated into pGL3-basic vector and DNA sequences of the constructs confirmed by DNA sequencing (Morehouse School of Medicine DNA Facility). 22Rv1 cells overexpressing Snail or C4-2 cells with stable Snail knockdown were plated at 6 x 10
5 cells/well in 6-well dishes in hormone-depleted media. Cultures were transfected with 3 μg of DNA from the full-length maspin promoter reporter plasmids and an internal renilla luciferase plasmid for transfection efficiency, using Lipofectamine 2000. After 48 h, the cells were harvested in reporter lysis buffer (Promega), and supernatant(s) were used to determine luciferase activity using the Dual-Glo Luciferase Assay System (Promega) according to the manufacturer’s instruction. The results were expressed as the increased induction (or suppression) of the reporter plasmid after normalization against the internal control plasmid.
ChIP Assay
22RV1 cells either stably expressing Neo vector control (Neo10 clone) or Snail cDNA (Snail30 clone) were used for ChIP assay using the EZ-ChIP kit. The cells were cross-linked with formaldehyde for 10 min at 37°C with mild shaking, washed in ice cold PBS, unreacted formaldehyde was quenched with glycine, then washed with PBS and resuspended in SDS buffer. Samples were sonicated to approximately 600 bps with Sonicator (Misonix Sonicator S-3000), diluted in dilution buffer with inhibitors and precleared with agarose G beads. The supernatant was used directly in immunoprecipitation with anti-Snail, IgG (for negative control) or RNA polymerase II (for positive control). The immunocomplexes were mixed with 120 μl of DNA coated agarose G beads followed by incubation overnight. Pellets were washed in a low salt wash buffer (x1), high salt wash buffer (x1), LiCl wash buffer (x1) and TE buffer (x2). This was followed by adding 200 μl of elution buffer to elute the protein/DNA complex and cross-linking was reversed by adding 5 M NaCl with incubation overnight. The protein was then digested by addition of 1 μl proteinase K to each sample followed by incubation for 2 hrs. DNA was purified by washing with elution buffer and centrifugation and then subsequently processed by PCR.
Quantitative Real-Time PCR (QRT-PCR)
2 μl of the DNA eluates from the ChIP assay were added into a 96 well QPCR plate for each corresponding sample. Subsequently a master mix was made using maspin promoter primers (catalog number GPH1006313(−)01A, from SA Biosciences, Frederick, MD), and the RT2 qPCR mastermix reagent (catalog number PA-011, from SA Biosciences) according to manufacterer’s instructions. QRT-PCR was then done using an I-cycler (Bio-Rad) to quantitate transcript levels by the SYBR Green method. Cycle threshold differences were then determined using an I-cycler (Bio-Rad) relative to input chromatin (chromatin initially used for the immunoprecipation). Fold changes in transcript levels of maspin gene were then calculated in samples immunoprecipitated with either RNA polymerase II (positive control), mouse IgG (negative control), or Snail antibody. The results were graphed and the standard error determined. Samples were also resolved on an agarose gel. As another control PCR was performed with primers to maspin intronic region. The primer sequence was Forward: 5′- AGGAGCCAGTCAGCATAGGA- 3′ and Reverse: 5′- TTTGGCTGCAAACACCTACA- 3′.
Discussion
Our research focused on studying the mechanism(s) by which Snail transcription factor may contribute to cancer progression in prostate cancer. One of the ways by which Snail can lead to cancer progression is through induction of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which involves the loss of epithelial markers such as E-cadherin, and acquisition of mesenchymal markers such as vimentin [
2]. Snail can negatively regulate a number of tumor suppressors including E-cadherin, claudins, and occludin, by binding to E-boxes in the promoter region [
2,
23,
24]. This communication studied the relationship between Snail and maspin tumor suppressor, to discover a new mechanism by which maspin may be downregulated during prostate tumor progression.
Maspin tumor suppressor has been shown to be downregulated in breast and gastric cancer through promoter methylation [
15,
25,
26]. Maspin expression is also lost with prostate tumor progression, through inactivation of a positive Ets response element and activation of a negative HRE response element recognized by AR [
18]. Recently, interleukin-6 (IL-6) signaling has been shown to downregulate maspin expression [
27].
The present study correlates Snail expression with prostate cancer, as Snail protein was absent in normal immortalized prostate epithelial cells (PrEC), however it was then expressed in our LNCaP progression model (LNCaP, C4-2), DU145 prostate cancer cell lines, though undetectable in 22Rv1 cells. Conversely, maspin expression was high in PrEC and low in the prostate cancer cell lines. The inverse relationship between Snail and maspin led us to investigate whether Snail may be negatively regulating maspin expression. Indeed, we found that when Snail is overexpressed in 22Rv1 cells, maspin expression was decreased, while migratory and invasive potential increased. Conversely, when Snail expression was inhibited with siRNA or shRNA in DU145 or C4-2 cells, respectively, maspin expression increased, while migratory potential decreased. This study reports evidence for the first time, that Snail oncogene can negatively regulate maspin tumor suppressor. Since maspin is silenced epigenetically in some cancers, studies aim at preventing tumor progression by reinducing maspin expression with methylation inhibitors such as 5- aza-2 ′-deoxycytidine and histone deacetylase inhibitors [
28‐
30]. These are general inhibitors that would lead to non-specific demethylation. We provide a novel mechanism by which therapeutic targeting of Snail in the future, may prevent tumor cell migration by reinducing maspin expression.
We have also utilized LNCaP and 22Rv1 cells transiently or stably transfected with Snail to show that Snail does significantly reduce maspin promoter activity, while knockdown of endogenous Snail in C4-2 cells increased maspin promoter activity. To elucidate the mechanism, we have found 8 E-boxes within the maspin promoter and showed that Snail directly binds to the maspin promoter in 22Rv1 cells. Our data suggest that Snail may repress maspin independently of AR since knockdown of Snail resulted in decreased maspin expression in both AR-negative DU145 and AR-positive C4-2 cells. It is also possible that Snail may negatively regulate maspin by recruiting histone deacteylases (HDACs). Although Snail has been shown to directly bind to the E-cadherin promoter, it can also repress E-cadherin epigenetically by recruiting a corepressor, Ajuba LIM domain protein resulting in histone modifications and promoter methylation [
31,
32]. It was reported that receptor activator of NF-kappa B ligand (RANKL) signaling to Ikappa B kinase alpha (IKKalpha) represses maspin expression in prostate epithelial cells, associated with nuclear translocation of IKKalpha [
33]. We have previously shown that Snail can induce the expression of RANKL [
19], so it is possible that Snail may be repressing maspin through the RANKL-IKKalpha pathway. Alternatively, p53 has been shown to bind to maspin promoter leading to activation of its transcription [
34,
35], while Snail interacts directly with the DNA binding domain of p53 diminishing its tumor suppressive function [
36], therefore, it seems plausible that Snail may inhibit maspin via p53 pathway. Thus although we report one step in which Snail directly binds to maspin promoter to inhibit its promoter activity and expression, this does not exclude other possibilities by which Snail may negatively regulate maspin.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors’ contributions
VOM designed the research studies. CLN, VH, BS, DMK, TG, and BTV carried out the experiments; VOM and CLN analyzed and interpreted the data; CLN and VOM wrote the draft of the manuscript. All authors read and approved of the final manuscript.