Defining super-enhancer landscape in triple-negative breast cancer by multiomic profiling

Public Time: 2021-04-14 00:00:00
Journal: Nature Communications
doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22445-0
Author: Hao Huang;Jianyang Hu;Alishba Maryam;Qinghua Huang;Yuchen Zhang;Saravanan Ramakrishnan;Jingyu Li;Haiying Ma;Victor W. S. Ma;Wah Cheuk;Grace Y. K. So;Wei Wang;William C. S. Cho;Liang Zhang;Kui Ming Chan;Xin Wang;Y. Rebecca Chin
Summary: Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease, affecting over 3.5 million women worldwide, yet the functional role of cis-regulatory elements including super-enhancers in different breast cancer subtypes remains poorly characterized. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer with a poor prognosis. Here we apply integrated epigenomic and transcriptomic profiling to uncover super-enhancer heterogeneity between breast cancer subtypes, and provide clinically relevant biological insights towards TNBC. Using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing, we identify genes that are specifically regulated by TNBC-specific super-enhancers, including FOXC1 and MET, thereby unveiling a mechanism for specific overexpression of the key oncogenes in TNBC. We also identify ANLN as a TNBC-specific gene regulated by super-enhancer. Our studies reveal a TNBC-specific epigenomic landscape, contributing to the dysregulated oncogene expression in breast tumorigenesis.
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