Pupo Marco, Bodmer Alexandre, Berto Melissa, Maggiolini Marcello, Dietrich Pierre-Yves, Picard Didier
Département de Biologie Cellulaire and Institute of Genetics and Genomics of Geneva, Université de Genève, Sciences III, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland.
Department of Pharmacy, Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy.
Oncotarget. 2017 Jul 18;8(29):46728-46744. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.18156.
GPER is a membrane-associated estrogen receptor of the family of G-protein coupled receptors. For breast cancer, the contribution of GPER to promoting the proliferation and migration of both carcinoma cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in response to estrogen and other agonists has extensively been investigated. Intriguingly, GPER was previously found to be localized to the nucleus in one isolate of breast CAFs. Moreover, this nuclear GPER was shown to bind regulatory sequences of cancer-relevant target genes and to induce their expression. We decided to find out what induces the nuclear localization of GPER, how general this phenomenon is, and what its functional significance is. We discovered that interfering with N-linked glycosylation of GPER, either by mutation of the predicted glycosylation sites or pharmacologically with tunicamycin, drives GPER into the nucleus. Surveying a small set of CAFs from breast cancer biopsies, we found that a relatively common single nucleotide polymorphism, which results in the expression of a GPER variant with the amino acid substitution P16L, is associated with the nuclear localization of GPER. GPER with P16L fails to be glycosylated, presumably because of a conformational effect on the nearby glycosylation sites. GPER P16L is defective for membrane-associated signaling, but instead acts like an estrogen-stimulated transcription factor. In CAFs, it induces the secretion of paracrine factors that promote the migration of carcinoma cells. This raises the possibility that the GPER P16L polymorphism could be a risk factor for breast cancer.
GPER是G蛋白偶联受体家族中的一种膜相关雌激素受体。对于乳腺癌,人们已经广泛研究了GPER在雌激素和其他激动剂作用下对促进癌细胞和癌相关成纤维细胞(CAF)增殖和迁移的作用。有趣的是,此前在一种乳腺CAF分离物中发现GPER定位于细胞核。此外,这种核内GPER被证明可结合癌症相关靶基因的调控序列并诱导其表达。我们决定弄清楚是什么诱导了GPER的核定位,这种现象有多普遍,以及其功能意义是什么。我们发现,通过预测的糖基化位点突变或用衣霉素进行药理学干预来干扰GPER的N-糖基化,会促使GPER进入细胞核。在对一小部分乳腺癌活检组织中的CAF进行检测时,我们发现一种相对常见的单核苷酸多态性与GPER的核定位有关,这种多态性导致表达一种带有氨基酸替换P16L的GPER变体。带有P16L的GPER无法进行糖基化,可能是因为对附近糖基化位点产生了构象影响。GPER P16L在膜相关信号传导方面存在缺陷,但却像一种雌激素刺激的转录因子一样发挥作用。在CAF中,它会诱导旁分泌因子的分泌从而促进癌细胞的迁移。这增加了GPER P16L多态性可能是乳腺癌风险因素的可能性。