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Inhibition of AHR transcription by NF1C is affected by a single-nucleotide polymorphism, and is involved in suppression of human uterine endometrial cancer

Oncogene volume 32, pages 4950–4959 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Involvement of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) in carcinogenesis has been suggested in many studies. Upregulation of AHR has been reported in some cancer species, and an association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of AHR and cancer risk or cancer development has also been reported. This evidence suggests the involvement of some specific SNPs in AHR transcriptional regulation in the process of carcinogenesis or cancer development, but there have been no studies to elucidate the mechanism involved. In this study, we identified the transcription factor Nuclear Factor 1-C (NF1C) as a candidate to regulate AHR transcription in a polymorphism-dependent manner. SNP rs10249788 was included in a consensus binding site for NF1C. Our results suggested that NF1C preferred the C allele to the T allele at rs10249788 for binding. Forced expression of NF1C suppressed the activity of the AHR promoter with C at rs10249788 stronger than that with T. Moreover, expression analysis of human uterine endometrial cancer (HEC) specimens showed greater upregulation of AHR and downregulation of NF1C than those of normal endometrium specimens. Sequence analysis showed HEC patients at advanced stages tended to possess T/T alleles more frequently than healthy women. We also demonstrated that NF1C suppressed proliferation, motility and invasion of HEC cells. This function was at least partially mediated by AHR. This study is the first to report that a polymorphism on the AHR regulatory region affected transcriptional regulation of the AHR gene in vitro. Because NF1C is a tumor suppressor, our new insights into AHR deregulation and its polymorphisms could reveal novel mechanisms of genetic susceptibility to cancer.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Suminori Kono at the Division of Environmental and Social Medicine, Kyushu University for kindly providing us with DNA from blood samples. We appreciate the technical support from Kanako Okamoto, Dr Tomoko Yoneda and the Research Support Center, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University. We also thank Drs Kiyoko Kato and Kiyomi Tsukimori for their valuable discussions. This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid (23249075, 23591596, 23791847 and 23592405) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. This work was also partly supported by grants from The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, and the Environment Technology Development Fund of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan.

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  1. D Li and T Takao: These authors contribute equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    D Li, R Tsunematsu, K Fukushima, H Kobayashi, N Wake & K Asanoma

  2. Department of Genomic Epidemiology, Research Center for Environment and Developmental Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    T Takao, S Morokuma & N Wake

  3. Department of Gynecology, National Kyushu Cancer Center, Fukuoka, Japan

    T Saito

  4. Department of Dermatology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    M Furue

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Li, D., Takao, T., Tsunematsu, R. et al. Inhibition of AHR transcription by NF1C is affected by a single-nucleotide polymorphism, and is involved in suppression of human uterine endometrial cancer. Oncogene 32, 4950–4959 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/onc.2012.509

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