Originally published as JHC exPRESS on January 7, 2008. doi:10.1369/jhc.7A7359.2008
Volume 56 (5): 433-441, 2008 Copyright ©The Histochemical Society, Inc. Cellular Expression Patterns of Genes Upregulated in Murine and Human Colonic Neoplasms
McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research (XC,WME,RBH,WFD) and Laboratory of Genetics (WFD), University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, and Division of Biomedical Informatics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio (BJA) Correspondence to: William F. Dove, McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, 1400 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706. E-mail: dove{at}oncology.wisc.edu
Markers overexpressed in colonic tumors of the multiple intestinal neoplasia (Min) mouse have been recently identified by cDNA subtractive hybridization and by microarray analysis. The significance of such a marker depends on its expression in tumor vs stromal lineages and on its expression pattern in normal tissue. From 34 differentially expressed markers, 14 were found to be expressed from supporting lineages. The markers expressed in the tumor lineage were grouped into three classes on the basis of ISH in mouse models and IHC in human adenomas. The first class includes markers expressed both in neoplastic cells and in the proliferating cells residing at the bottom of normal colonic crypts. The second class of markers shows elevated expression in neoplastic cells and also in the postmitotic Paneth cells of the small intestine. Finally, the third class of marker shows detectable intestinal expression only within tumors but not in the normal intestinal epithelium. Is such a tumor-associated marker uniquely essential for tumor growth? Deficiency for the tumor-associated glycoprotein clusterin does not affect the multiplicity or growth rate of intestinal tumors in Min mice. Thus, clusterin is a candidate secreted colon cancer marker but not a single target for chemoprevention or therapy. (J Histochem Cytochem 56:433–441, 2008)
Key Words: colorectal cancer gene expression Min mouse intestinal tumor clusterin
COLORECTAL CANCER is one of the most common cancers in the Western world, with high morbidity and mortality (American Cancer Society 2007
Colorectal neoplasms carry a number of mutations, some of which affect the cancer phenotype as shown by human and mouse kindreds predisposed to colon cancer (Sjoblom et al. 2006
Here, we report the analysis of the cellular expression patterns of 20 candidate genes detected by suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) and microarray analysis (MA) (Kaiser et al. 2007
Mice Mice were bred, maintained, and genotyped for the Min mutation (Su et al. 1992
Tissue Collection and RNA Preparation
Human Tissues
ISH
IHC
Intestinal Tumor Scoring and Sizing
Identification of Genes Whose Expression Is Elevated in Min Intestinal Tumors A group of genes, upregulated in colonic tumor tissue in Min mice, was identified using two different approaches: expression in tumors compared with that of adjacent normal tissue by SSH and expression in tumors was compared with that during normal development using MAs (Kaiser et al. 2007
To study transcript levels in murine colonic tumors at a cellular level, ISH was performed with gene-specific cRNA probes and corresponding sense control probes. We chose both Min tumors and tumors induced by azoxymethane (AOM), a strong carcinogen, because both of them showed strong cytoplasmic and nuclear β-catenin accumulation (Kaiser et al. 2007
Proliferation Zone–associated Expression The HSP70 protects cells from stress by binding and stabilizing partially folded proteins (Wegele et al. 2004 IHC of human colonic adenomas showed strong staining of HSP70 in both adenomas (Figure 1E) and adenocarcinomas (data not shown), as well as in the bottom of the normal crypts (Figure 1F). Therefore, HSP70 expression in human colonic lesions qualitatively matches that in the murine model. Several other genes showed this proliferation zone–associated expression pattern: stathmin 1 (Figure 1G), CD24a antigen (Figure 1H), heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein A1 (hnRPA1), β-tubulin 5 (tubb5), synaptophysin-like protein, arachidonate 12-lipoxygenase, and protein expressed in non-metastatic cells (NME4; data not shown for the last five genes). Immunostaining for stathmin 1 and CD24a on human samples showed similar expression in the proliferation zone of normal colonic crypts (data not shown). To compare this expression pattern with that of Ki67, a proliferation marker, ISH for CD24a antigen and IHC for Ki67 were performed on adjacent sections of a Min colonic tumor. Interestingly, the comparison between these two showed no apparent correspondence within the tumors, indicating that genes with proliferation zone expression in normal tissue may function differently in tumors or be passive recruits.
Paneth Cell–associated Expression A polyclonal antibody against MMP7 antigen was used to detect MMP7 expression in human colonic neoplasms. Strong positive signals were detected within adenomas (Figure 2E) and adenocarcinomas (data not shown) but not in normal colonic epithelium or in hyperplastic polyps (Figure 2F), which seem to be an entity distinct from the adenoma. This result is consistent with our observations in the murine model. Immunostaining for lysozyme showed strong staining on human colonic adenomas (data not shown).
Two other genes, defensin
Tumor-associated Expression A monoclonal antibody against human MLP was used to detect MLP antigen on human colonic lesions. Elevated MLP production can be detected in a subset of tumor cells of the colonic tubular (data not shown) and villous adenomas (Figure 3E) but not in adjacent normal epithelium (Figure 3F) or hyperplastic polyps. Similar staining can be found within invasive human adenocarcinomas (data not shown).
Unlike the patterns associated with the normal proliferative zone and with the Paneth cell, elevated MLP expression can be detected only in neoplastic tissue and not in normal intestinal tissue. Immunostaining for β-catenin on adjacent slides indicated that MLP staining lay within tumor cells as defined by strong accumulation of β-catenin caused by loss of wildtype APC (data not shown). This expression pattern was therefore defined as tumor associated. We identified 10 other genes with tumor-associated expression pattern: clusterin (Chen et al. 2003
Testing an Effect of Clusterin Deficiency on the Tumor Phenotype of Min Mice To study whether clusterin deficiency affects Min-induced intestinal tumorigenesis, Min mice were bred to those carrying the knockout allele of clusterin, and the resulting progeny were intercrossed. At 100 days, Min mice carrying zero, one, or two copies of the clusterin-deficient allele were killed, and their entire intestinal tracts were isolated and fixed. The average tumor multiplicity for the three genotypes was 133 ± 35 (n=31) for the wildtype, 121 ± 32 (n=66) for the heterozygous, and 122 ± 36 (n=43) for the homozygous knockout (Figure 4 ). A two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test indicated no significant difference between any two of these three genotypes (p>0.05). The sizes of all the tumors in 10 mice randomly selected from each genotype were measured to study the possible role of clusterin deficiency in net tumor growth. The average maximum diameters of intestinal tumors are 1.38 ± 0.23 mm for the wildtype, 1.62 ± 0.26 mm for the heterozygote, and 1.52 ± 0.31 mm for the homozygous knockout. Again, a Wilcoxon rank sum test of the size distributions found no significant difference between the wildtype and the homozygous knockout or between the heterozygote and the homozygous knockout (p>0.05). Consequently, the tumor-associated expression of clusterin is not uniquely essential for Min-induced intestinal tumor initiation or growth.
A number of marker genes for colorectal cancer have been identified from transcript profiling performed with cancer cell lines, human samples, and samples from animal models (Paoni et al. 2003 Using ISH, we successfully analyzed these genes for their RNA expression within murine colorectal tumors. The advantage of this approach is that the gene-specific RNA probes can be conveniently synthesized based on the cDNA information. This approach, however, requires faithful preservation of RNA during tissue collection and processing, which can be problematic in archived human tissues. In contrast, IHC with protein-specific antibodies does not have this limitation. We showed the expression of several candidate genes using IHC in archived human colonic tissues. This approach, however, can be compromised by cross-reaction by the available antibodies. Thus, both IHC and ISH may generate false positives and need rigorous negative controls to ensure specificity. Combining these two approaches on same tissue can greatly reduce the probability of false positives. The most reliable negative control for each approach, however, is to use homozygous-null tissues from mice with a targeted ablation of the gene of interest. We used tumors from clusterin-deficient Min mice to prove that our ISH and IHC assays for clusterin are not compromised by cross-reaction (data not shown).
Mice with a targeted gene ablation provide a central tool to analyze the function of a candidate gene in tumorigenesis. One example is MMP7, a secreted metalloproteinase degrading extracellular matrix (Ii et al. 2006 Because the candidate genes identified in the mouse tumors have similar expression patterns in human tumors, the cellular level expression analysis and functional study in the Min mouse provide useful information for clinical study of colon cancer. Some candidate genes with tumor-associated expression represent secreted proteins, such as clusterin. The signatures of these genes present in the serum of patients may serve as markers for the early detection and diagnosis of this disease. Furthermore, targeted gene deletion will provide a subset of candidate genes that are necessary for tumor initiation, maintenance, and/or progression. The products of these genes could be used as targets of drug intervention for human colorectal cancer. Further studies will emerge from this strategy of coupling the power for discovery of array and cDNA subtraction to the cellular resolution provided by ISH and IHC.
This research was supported by Grants R37-CA63677 and U01-CA84227 from the National Cancer Institute to W.F.D. This is publication #3638 from the Laboratory of Genetics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI. The authors thank our colleagues in the Mouse Models for Human Cancer Consortium for the shared microarray analysis that has provided one starting point for this study. David Threadgill generously provided sections of appropriately fixed AOM tumors for our ISH analysis. Jose Torrealba generously provided sections of human colonic lesions. The Histotechnology Facility of the McArdle Laboratory (Jane Weeks, leader) provided sections of high quality for this study. Cheri Pasch, Ryan Burch, and Kathy Krentz provided fastidious assistance in ISH and Dawn Albrecht in the maintenance of pedigreed mouse kindreds. Finally, we thank members of the Dove laboratory for helpful discussion and especially Linda Clipson for critical input and skilled execution in the generation of this manuscript.
Received for publication October 10, 2007; accepted December 20, 2007
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