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Molecular Biology, Pathobiology, and Genetics |
1 Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; 2 University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas; 3 National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland; 4 M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; 5 University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio; 6 Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota; 7 National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland; 8 University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado; 9 Karmanos Cancer Institute, Detroit, Michigan; 10 Medical University of Ohio, Toledo, Ohio; and 11 Louisiana State University Health Science Center, New Orleans, Louisiana
Requests for reprints: Ming You, Department of Surgery and The Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University, 660 Euclid Avenue, Box 8109, St. Louis, MO 63110. Phone: 314-362-9294; Fax: 314-362-9366; E-mail: youm{at}wustl.edu.
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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50% of these cases (4–6). In chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) patients, an estimated 50% to 90% of tumors with acquired resistance have the analogous resistance mutation (T315I) in BCR-ABL (7). Interestingly, Bell et al. (8) report the first identification of the T790M mutation in the germ line of a European family that developed lung adenocarcinoma with bronchoalveolar (BAC) differentiation. This observation suggests that this mutation may be associated with genetic susceptibility to lung cancer and may underlie familial predisposition to the disease. The allele, although common in drug-treated tumors, seems extremely rare in the germ line of the general population, as the authors report no mutation observed in 782 alleles sequenced. Many groups have reported that the kinase activity of the EGFR-T790M–resistant mutant is indistinguishable from wild-type (WT) EGFR (4–6, 9, 10). What is somewhat perplexing is how T790M would confer susceptibility if its activity were identical to the WT molecule. Our analysis shows that T790M in fact does exhibit enhanced autophosphorylation at Y992 and Y1068, and this mutation is associated with a proliferative advantage in a human bronchial epithelial cell line. Interestingly, the mutation seems to be rare as it was not found in any of the familial or sporadic lung cancer populations we screened. | Materials and Methods |
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Plasmids, transfection, and viral infection. Mammalian expression plasmids encoding for human EGFR, EGFR-T790M, and EGFR-L858R were kind gifts from William Pao (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY). HEK293T and COS-7 cells were transfected with the indicated EGFR plasmids using LipofectAMINE 2000 (Invitrogen). Gefitinib was obtained from Chemoprevention Branch, National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, MD) and added to cells 10 h before lysis.
To introduce WT and mutant EGFRs into HBEC3 cells, we used the pLenti6/V5 Directional TOPO Cloning kit (Invitrogen). Construction of pLenti-wt-EGFR was described previously (11). The T790M and L747_E749 deletion mutations were introduced into pLenti-wt-EGFR by using site-directed mutagenesis (Stratagene). pLenti-KRASV12 vector was constructed by cloning KRASV12 fragment from pBabe-KRASV12-hyg (11) into pLenti6/V5 vector. pLenti6/V5-GW/lacZ (Invitrogen) was used as a control. Viral transduction of HBEC3 cells was done following the manufacturer's instructions. Briefly, the 293FT cells were transiently transfected with viral vector together with ViraPower (Invitrogen). Forty-eight hours after transfection, the supernatant of the 293FT cells was harvested and passed through a 0.45-µm filter and frozen at –80°C. The supernatant was used for infection after addition of 4 µg/mL polybrene (Sigma). Forty-eight hours after infection, drug selection of infected cells was started with 5 µg/mL blasticidin (Invitrogen) and continued for 7 days.
Colony formation assays. Liquid colony formation assays were done as described previously (11). Briefly, 200 viable cells were plated in triplicate on 100-mm plates and cultured in keratinocyte serum-free medium supplemented with 50 µg/mL of bovine pituitary extract without EGF. Surviving colonies were counted 10 days later after staining with methylene blue, and colonies >3 mm in diameter were counted.
Western blot and antibodies. Cell lysates were prepared in LDS sample buffer (Invitrogen) and electrophoresed on NuPAGE gels (Invitrogen). Protein was transferred to polyvinylidene difluoride membranes and blotted using the antibodies as indicated: anti-EGFR (Cell Signaling Technology), anti–EGFR-Y1068 (Cell Signaling Technology), anti–EGFR-Y992 (Cell Signaling Technology), anti–mitogen–activated protein kinase (MAPK; Cell Signaling Technology), anti–phosphorylated MAPK (Thr202/Tyr204; Cell Signaling Technology), anti–phosphorylated AKT (Ser473; Cell Signaling Technology), anti-AKT (Cell Signaling Technology), anti–
–tubulin (Santa Cruz Biotechnology), and anti–cyclin D1 (Santa Cruz Biotechnology).
EGFR exon 20 genotyping. Amplification of human EGFR exon 20 was done via standard PCR methods using forward (5'-GACACTGACGTGCCTCTCC-3') and reverse (5'-TTATCTCCCCTCCCCGTATC-3') primers. PCR products were electrophoresed on agarose gels, purified, and subjected to standard DNA sequencing. The EGFR-T790M mutation is deduced by the genotype (C/T) at position 86 in exon 20.
Lung cancer DNAs. The Genetic Epidemiology of Lung Cancer Consortium (GELCC) has accrued over 700 families with three or more first-degree relatives with lung cancer (12), of which this study genotyped 237 individual probands. Paraffin blocks of lung tumors (45) with BAC differentiation (and 32 corresponding normals), in addition to the fresh frozen lung tumor DNAs, were obtained from the Washington University Tissue Procurement Center as paraffin blocks. For the blocks, genomic DNA was prepared by slicing several paraffin curls and adding xylenes to dissolve the paraffin. The remaining tissue was washed with ethanol, dried, and resuspended in PCR buffer (0.5% Tween 20, 0.5% NP40) and digested in proteinase K (1 mg/mL) at 55°C overnight. Chloroform/isoamyl alcohol (24:1) was added to the digest and soluble DNA was isolated from the aqueous phase.
| Results |
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3 mm in diameter) colonies compared with WT EGFR but less than the activated L747-E749 deletion (Fig. 2A and B
). These results indicate that EGFR-T790M does in fact provide a growth advantage over WT EGFR. When we analyzed the status of EGFR phosphorylation at Y992 and Y1068 in these cells, we saw an increase in the EGFR-T790M mutant (Fig. 2C), consistent with what was observed in HEK293T and COS-7 cells (Fig. 1A–D).
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If EGFR-T790M is a human susceptibility allele, it is necessary to determine its prevalence in families with high susceptibility to lung cancer. With these families, a set of 52 extended pedigrees was used to show linkage on chromosome 6q23-25 (12). A concerted effort by the GELCC has attempted to identify the gene(s) associated with this susceptibility. We proposed that if the T790M mutation is a common variant for predisposition to lung cancer, it could potentially be enriched in probands from lung cancer families. Genomic DNA from 237 probands representing lung cancer families with more than three affected individuals was analyzed. PCR amplification and DNA sequencing of the resistance mutation in exon 20 were done. Interestingly, we did not observe the T790M mutation in any of the family probands analyzed or in any of 60 random fresh-frozen resected lung tumors (Fig. 3A ). This would suggest that the T790M mutation is not enriched in our population and is likely a minor contributor to genetic susceptibility in familial lung cancers. Furthermore, in the aforementioned GELCC linkage study, the analysis of 52 families (and family subsets within) did not reveal a significant logarithm of odds score on or near 7p11, where the EGFR gene is located, which also suggests that the mutation is not a major contributor to familial predisposition to lung cancer (Fig. 3B; ref. 12). Representative families used in this study are indicated in Fig. 3C and D. We further tested to see if T790M might in fact be solely responsible for predisposition to adenocarcinomas with BAC differentiation. We sequenced 45 BAC tumors and 32 of the corresponding normal tissues and did not observe the T790M mutation in any of these samples (Fig. 3A). This further suggests the rarity of this potential predisposing mutation.
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| Discussion |
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Our results suggest that the T790M mutation may in fact provide a proliferative advantage in normal cells by increasing kinase activity and downstream signaling. Our data suggest that EGFR-T790M does in fact exhibit higher kinase activity than WT molecule in HEK293T and COS-7 cell lines. Overexpression in our HBEC3 cell line showed increased tyrosine phosphorylation at Y992 and Y1068 and increased colony formation. Increased proliferation is most evident in the absence of EGF in the medium, suggesting that the activating T790M EGFR mutation is involved in the proliferative effects observed. EGFR kinase activity is essential for oncogenic transformation. EGFR extracellular domain deletion mutants and overexpression of EGFR are commonly found in human cancers (17, 18). Our data also show that phosphorylation levels between WT and T790M are indistinguishable at higher expression levels (Fig. 1C), yet differences are more apparent at lower expression levels. We believe this may be an explanation why others have seen no difference between EGFR and T790M.
EGFR signaling activates many pathways that lead to proliferative advantages. The Ras/MAPK pathway is activated via ligation of Grb2 to an activated EGFR molecule. In our 293T overexpression system, we observed that MAPK activity is increased by T790M versus WT EGFR. However, a significant effect of T790M on these downstream kinases was not evident in our HBEC3 system, which might suggest that other signaling/transcriptional events are responsible for the proliferative changes. Recent work has revealed transcriptional changes in cyclin D1, may be a key response to gefitinib resistance by T790M and susceptibility to the irreversible inhibitor CL-387,785 (14). We did not observe changes in cyclin D1 levels in the HBEC3 system and believe other, yet unidentified, mechanisms exist to account for the proliferative advantages caused by mutant EGFR.
A recent study, using a mutant-enriched PCR system, revealed the presence of the T790M mutation as a minor clone in non–small cell lung cancer tumors (19). It is suggested that these clones are selected for during gefitinib treatment and are enriched in the resistant tumor but do not provide the main proliferative function for oncogenesis. Our observations suggest that T790M as a germ-line mutation (i.e., in all cells) may provide the mild proliferative push for lung cancer development.
Many lines of evidence suggest the existence of a limited number of genetic factors that control susceptibility to lung cancer (20–22). However, due to a high-case fatality rate (5-year survival rate of 15%), obtaining biospecimen samples for DNA analysis is particularly difficult (23). A collaborative effort of GELCC has accrued DNA from families with lung, throat, and laryngeal cancers since the early 1990s. At present, 771 families with three or more first-degree relatives affected with lung cancer have been collected, of which 11% have sufficient family-wide biospecimen availability for any future studies. Subsequent sequencing of 237 families with predisposition to lung cancer, 45 BAC tumors and 60 fresh-frozen resected tumors, did not reveal any mutations, suggesting that T790M is likely a rare mutation. Nevertheless, our data provide a basis for EGFR-T790M as a rare susceptibility allele in human lung cancer.
| 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 W. Pao (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY) for providing mammalian expression plasmids encoding for human EGFR, EGFR-T790M, and EGFR-L858R; R. Lubet (Chemoprevention Branch, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD) for providing gefinitib; and J. Clark, Q. Chen, and M. Watson for their assistance in various aspects of this work.
| Footnotes |
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Received 1/17/07. Revised 2/20/07. Accepted 3/ 9/07.
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