Department of Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200127, PR China; State Key Laboratory of Systems Medicine for Cancer, Shanghai Cancer Institute, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, PR China.
Department of Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200127, PR China.
Cancer Lett. 2024 Aug 28;598:217130. doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2024.217130. Epub 2024 Jul 30.
PURPOSE: Cholesterol metabolism reprograming has been acknowledged as a novel feature of cancers. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a cancer with a high demand of cholesterol for rapid growth. The underlying mechanism of how cholesterol metabolism homestasis are disturbed in PDAC is explored. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: The relevance between PDAC and cholesterol was confirmed in TCGA database. The expression and clinical association were discovered in TCGA and GEO datasets. Knockdown and overexpression of AGFG1 was adopted to perform function studies. RNA sequencing, cholesterol detection, transmission electron microscope, co-immunoprecipitation, and immunofluorescence et al. were utilized to reveal the underlying mechanism. RESULTS: AGFG1 was identified as one gene positively correlated with cholesterol metabolism in PDAC as revealed by bioinformatics analysis. AGFG1 expression was then found associated with poor prognosis in PDAC. AGFG1 knockdown led to decreased proliferation of tumor cells both in vitro and in vivo. By RNA sequencing, we found AGFG1 upregulated expression leads to enhanced intracellular cholesterol biosynthesis. AGFG1 knockdown suppressed cholesterol biosynthesis and an accumulation of cholesterol in the ER. Mechanistically, we confirmed that AGFG1 interacted with CAV1 to relocate cholesterol for the proceeding of cholesterol biosynthesis, therefore causing disorders in intracellular cholesterol metabolism. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates the tumor-promoting role of AGFG1 by disturbing cholesterol metabolism homestasis in PDAC. Our study has present a new perspective on cancer therapeutic approach based on cholerstrol metabolism in PDAC.
目的:胆固醇代谢重编程已被认为是癌症的一个新特征。胰腺导管腺癌(PDAC)是一种对胆固醇快速生长有高需求的癌症。本研究旨在探索 PDAC 中胆固醇代谢稳态失调的潜在机制。
实验设计:在 TCGA 数据库中证实了 PDAC 与胆固醇之间的相关性。在 TCGA 和 GEO 数据集上发现了表达和临床关联。采用 AGFG1 的敲低和过表达来进行功能研究。进行了 RNA 测序、胆固醇检测、透射电子显微镜、共免疫沉淀和免疫荧光等实验,以揭示潜在的机制。
结果:通过生物信息学分析,确定 AGFG1 是 PDAC 中与胆固醇代谢呈正相关的一个基因。随后发现 AGFG1 的表达与 PDAC 的不良预后相关。AGFG1 敲低导致肿瘤细胞在体外和体内的增殖减少。通过 RNA 测序,我们发现 AGFG1 的上调表达导致细胞内胆固醇生物合成增强。AGFG1 敲低抑制了胆固醇生物合成和内质网中胆固醇的积累。机制上,我们证实 AGFG1 与 CAV1 相互作用,将胆固醇重新定位以进行胆固醇生物合成,从而导致细胞内胆固醇代谢紊乱。
结论:本研究通过扰乱 PDAC 中的胆固醇代谢稳态,证明了 AGFG1 的促肿瘤作用。本研究为基于 PDAC 中胆固醇代谢的癌症治疗方法提供了新的视角。
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