Targeted Brachyury Degradation Disrupts a Highly Specific Autoregulatory Program Controlling Chordoma Cell Identity

Overview

Journal Cell Rep Med

Publisher Cell Press

Specialties Biology
General Medicine

Date 2021 Feb 1

PMID 33521702

Citations 12

Authors

Hadley E Sheppard

Alessandra DallAgnese

Woojun D Park

M Hamza Shamim

Julien Dubrulle

Hannah L Johnson

Fabio Stossi

Patricia Cogswell

Josh Sommer

Joan Levy

Tanaz Sharifnia

Mathias J Wawer

Behnam Nabet

Nathanael S Gray

Paul A Clemons

Stuart L Schreiber

Paul Workman

Richard A Young

Charles Y Lin

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Chordomas are rare spinal tumors addicted to expression of the developmental transcription factor brachyury. In chordomas, brachyury is super-enhancer associated and preferentially downregulated by pharmacologic transcriptional CDK inhibition, leading to cell death. To understand the underlying basis of this sensitivity, we dissect the brachyury transcription regulatory network and compare the consequences of brachyury degradation with transcriptional CDK inhibition. Brachyury defines the chordoma super-enhancer landscape and autoregulates through binding its super-enhancer, and its locus forms a transcriptional condensate. Transcriptional CDK inhibition and brachyury degradation disrupt brachyury autoregulation, leading to loss of its transcriptional condensate and transcriptional program. Compared with transcriptional CDK inhibition, which globally downregulates transcription, leading to cell death, brachyury degradation is much to anti-apoptotic inhibition. These data suggest that brachyury downregulation is a core tenet of transcriptional CDK inhibition and motivates developing strategies to target brachyury and its autoregulatory feedback loop.

Citing Articles

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