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Cell, Tumor, and Stem Cell Biology |
1 Department of Pathology, Haartman Institute, University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Central Hospital Diagnostics Laboratory, Helsinki University Central Hospital; 2 Departments of Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology, and Toxicology and Industrial Hygiene, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health; 3 Laboratory of Computer and Information Science, Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki, Finland and 4 Department of Tumor Biology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
Requests for reprints: Penny Nymark, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41aA, 00250 Helsinki, Finland. Phone: 358-3-04742210; Fax: 358-3-04742021; E-mail: penny.nymark{at}helsinki.fi.
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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80% to 90% of all cases in males and
50% to 80% among females (1), whereas the etiologic fraction of asbestos exposure in lung cancer among men ranges from 6% to 23% in different studies (2). Smoking and asbestos exposure act in a synergetic manner in pulmonary carcinogenesis (3). Complex patterns of cytogenetic and molecular genetic changes are typical in lung tumors (4), and several chromosomal regions are recurrently amplified or deleted. This poses a challenge to identify the most essential lung carcinogenesis-associated patterns and alterations specific to asbestos exposure. Several yet unidentified genes in the deleted and amplified regions could be the underlying mediators of tumor formation and progression. Array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) is rapidly becoming the method of choice for high-resolution screening of genetic imbalances (5).
In vitro and in vivo experiments have shown that asbestos fibers can cause DNA double-strand breaks (6) as well as chromosomal aberrations and abnormal chromosome segregation (7). The effect of asbestos fibers on gene mutations is not significant. Despite extensive investigation, the mechanisms of fiber-induced genotoxicity are not yet clear, but direct interaction with the genetic material and indirect effects via production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been proposed (8). The exact molecular mechanism behind asbestos-related carcinogenesis is, however, thought to be very complex and involves several parallel pathways (9).
Here, we report investigation of gene copy number changes specific to asbestos-exposed lung cancer patients using classic and array CGHs, leading for the first time to identification of a genome-wide profile of aberrations in lung tumors of asbestos-exposed patients.
| Materials and Methods |
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Classic CGH. Classic CGH was done on all 28 tumor samples according to Björkqvist et al. (13). In brief, 1 µg of digested and labeled reference (Texas red-5-dCTP and Texas red-5-dUTP) and tumor (FITC-5-dCTP and FITC-5-dUTP) DNA was used for the hybridizations (NEN Life Science Products, Inc., Boston, MA). The slides were hybridized overnight at 37°C and washed according to standard protocols. The ISIS CGH program version 3 (MetaSystems GmbH, Altlussheim, Germany) was used for the analysis. Standard cutoff thresholds were set to <0.85 for deletions, >1.17 for amplifications, and >1.5 for high-level amplifications as described by Björkqvist et al. (13).
Array CGH. Array CGH analyses were conducted on 20 individual samples (11 exposed and 9 nonexposed; Table 1). Commercial cDNA microarrays (Human 1.0; Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, CA) with 12,814 unique clones (97% map to named human genes) were used as described by Wikman et al. (14). In brief, the hybridizations were done with 5 µg of digested (25 units AluI/25 units RsaI) reference and tumor DNA and labeled [Cy3-dUTP (tumor) and Cy5-dUTP (reference), Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Piscataway, NJ] using a random priming method (RadPrime DNA Labeling System, Life Technologies, Gaithersburg, MD). After hybridization at 65°C overnight, the slides were washed, dried in a centrifuge, and scanned using Agilent DNA microarray scanner (G2565AA).
Data processing. Raw signal intensities from the arrays were measured using the Feature Extraction software (Agilent Technologies). Measurements flagged as unreliable by Feature Extraction were removed from subsequent analysis. Additionally, measurements defined as faulty by our own image analysis methods were removed (see Supplementary data; ref. 15).5
Bioinformatics analysis. To identify exposure-related aberrations, the array CGH data from individual patients were analyzed at group level by comparing gene copy number ratios of the tumors of exposed and nonexposed patients. The identification of exposure-related areas was done using overlapping 0.5 to 1 Mbp segments that were tested for differences in copy numbers. First, the data were ordered according to the chromosomal location of the genes. Next, the genes within each segment were detected, and the number of correctly classified patients was calculated based on the copy number ratios of each gene.
The exposure-related aberrant regions were identified by means of hypothesis testing. In the two-tailed testing, the null hypothesis was set as "classification capability of the segment is not deviating" and the alternative hypothesis as "classification capability of the segment is deviating." The average number of correctly classified patients by the genes within each segment was used as a test statistic. The regions likely to be associated with exposure were identified using a permutation test with 10,000 permutations. The empirical Ps for the regions were calculated by comparing the test statistic to the permutation distribution. Regions containing less than five genes were filtered out.
| Results and Discussion |
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Array CGH. As the only clear difference our classic CGH analysis showed between the two groups was the 2p amplification, we chose to analyze the array CGH results at group level by comparing the signal log ratios in segments. This type of analysis does not require a priori knowledge of the type of aberrations in individual patients. Especially in this kind of comparative study, when the aim is to detect changes associated with a certain factor, our choice of statistical method is beneficial due to synergetic reasons. The identification of aberrations from each array data separately is also possible, but small changes may not be detected due to the background noise on the arrays. In addition, when comparing several sets of copy number data simultaneously, small changes common to a group of patients and significant low copy number changes may be detected.
Using the combined statistical analysis on the array CGH data, we found 18 regions in which the DNA copy number between the two groups differed significantly (Table 3 ; Figs. 1 and 2 ). As expected from the classic CGH data, none of these regions harbored a high DNA copy number change but either a low-level gain or a low-level deletion. Figure 1 shows the mean log ratios for each significant region (see also Supplementary Figs. S1 and S2). The choice of using combined analysis may not, however, fully compensate for the noise on the arrays caused by normal cell contamination. Thus, there is a chance that, for instance, a gain in one group of patients is misinterpreted as a loss in the other group. In addition, some of these loci seemed to be amplified in one group and deleted in the other.
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Many of the regions that significantly separated the two groups have previously been generally implicated in lung carcinogenesis (i.e., 1p36.1, 1q21.2, 3p21.31, 4q31.21, 5q35.2-q35.3, 9q34, 11p15.5, 17p13.3, 19p13, and 22q13).6 Yet, one of these regions, 3p21, has recently been shown by LOH analysis to be significantly associated with asbestos exposure (21). Moreover, in vitro, asbestos fibers are mainly involved in causing breaks in chromosomes 1 and 9 (22, 23).
The regions on the chromosomal arms 4q and 22q have been reported to be commonly lost also in mesothelioma (13, 24), a cancer type very closely linked to asbestos exposure. Similarly, 11q13.1 contains the FOSL1 (Fra-1) gene, which has been reported to be up-regulated in transformed mesothelial cells after asbestos exposure (25).
Interestingly, the gain at 2p seemed to be specific to the exposed group in both array CGH and classic CGH. A bit surprisingly, though, the minimal overlapping region in classic CGH was 2p23, whereas 2p21 was altered in array CGH. However, by classic CGH, the 2p23 gain in most cases was larger and contained 2p21 in half of the cases. This quite large region could thus be a target for further investigation because a region homologous to the human 2p21-25 has previously been reported to be amplified in radon-induced rat lung tumors (26). Otherwise 2p amplifications have rarely been described in non-SCLC. Neither has the region at 14q11.2, to our knowledge, been reported to be altered in lung cancer, but it has been assumed to be involved in chromosomal aberrations (inversions and translocations) in the blood samples of a population exposed to prolonged low dose-rate 60Co
-irradiation (27). This could be interesting, considering that radiation might cause similar aberrations as asbestos through the production of ROS (28).
Eleven of the 125 known fragile sites coincide with the 18 potentially asbestos-associated regions (P = 0.08; Table 3). Fragile sites are predetermined chromosomal breakage regions, which experimentally can be shown as site-specific gaps or breaks on metaphase chromosomes under conditions of replicative stress. As chromosomal expression of genetic instability, they have been suggested to have a role in carcinogenesis. As an example, the FHIT gene at FRA3B (3p14.2) is often damaged in tumors and presumably acts as a tumor suppressor (29). In addition, FRA16D has been found to contain mutations in cancer (30). Furthermore, in 11q13.2, a 700-kb deletion has recently been identified in cervical cancer, containing the fragile site FRA11A. This 700-kb region lies almost completely within the asbestos-associated regions (chromosome 11: 65,886,587-67,191,050 bp; ref. 31). All together, 12 genes that lie within the asbestos-related regions have previously been associated with fragile sites (Table 3; refs. 3134). Interestingly, all except one of the fragile sites that coincide with the asbestos-associated regions have been implicated in bladder cancer (35) that is also associated with asbestos exposure (36).
In conclusion, to reveal the possible aberrations related to asbestos exposure in the array data, we chose to carry out the data analysis using a combined array data set. We detected for the first time several, mostly small chromosomal regions that differed in DNA copy number between two groups of patients with asbestos-exposed and nonexposed lung tumors. The aberrations were either low copy number gains or losses with no high copy number amplifications. Previous studies have implied that smoking makes the genetic system of the cells more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of asbestos (22, 23). This evidence agrees with our classic CGH results, in which the same complex patterns of aberrations were generally found in both groups with just slightly more aberrations in the exposed group. Furthermore, our array CGH results showed that many of these sites coincided with fragile sites, implying that smoking and asbestos fibers may preferentially cause aberrations at fragile sites. To conclude, we report for the first time a gene copy number aberration profile related to asbestos exposure. A larger series of patients is needed for further verifying analysis, using for example expression data and analysis of allelic imbalance to determine whether these regions are specific and harbor putative target genes. Knowledge of the target genes could be important for the development of methods for early diagnosis of asbestos-related lung cancer. These findings could also benefit the research of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related cancers.
| Acknowledgments |
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The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
We thank Jassu Atiye, Virinder Sarhadi, Päivi Tuominen, and Tuula Stjernvall for excellent technical assistance.
| Footnotes |
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P. Nymark and H. Wikman contributed equally to this work.
5 CGH array data available at http://cgh.bioinfo.helsinki.fi/. ![]()
6 http://www.helsinki.fi/cmg/cgh_data.html. ![]()
Received 1/19/06. Revised 3/22/06. Accepted 3/31/06.
| References |
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-glutamylcysteine synthetase and glutathione regulate asbestos-induced expression of activator protein-1 family members and activity. Cancer Res 2004;64:77806.
-irradiation. Int J Radiat Biol 2002;78:62533.[CrossRef][Medline]This article has been cited by other articles:
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