Regulation of CD19 Exon 2 Inclusion in B-Lymphoid Cells By Splicing Factors and Epigenetic Marks
Authors: Black Kathryn , Sotillo Elena , Martinez Nicole , Gazzara Matthew , Barrera Alejandro , Barash Yoseph , Lynch Kristen , Thomas-Tikhonenko Andrei 
Published: October 2019

CD19 is expressed broadly on the surface of B-cells during normal development and malignant growth, making it a good target for immunotherapy. While immunotherapies targeting CD19 have had great success against pediatric B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), relapses lacking the CD19 epitope still occur (Maude et al., 2014). We have discovered that alternative splicing of CD19, in particular the skipping of exon 2, is responsible for the loss of CD19 extracellular domains, causing resistance to therapy (Sotillo et al., 2015). Here we investigate the molecular mechanism of CD19 exon 2 skipping.

The sequence-based algorithm AVISPA (Barash et al., 2013) predicts several splicing factors (SF) to bind near exon 2. We used RNA crosslink immunoprecipitation (CLIP) in nuclear lysates from Nalm-6 B-ALL cells to test the direct binding to exon 2 of 9 AVISPA-predicted SFs and 6 SFs commonly involved in exon skipping. This allowed us to identify SRSF3, hnRNP-A, and hnRNP-C as CD19 exon 2-bound proteins. Subsequent siRNA knockdown experiments reveled that downregulation of SRSF3, but not hnRNP-C, increases the frequency of exon 2 skipping in a dose dependent manner, suggesting that SRSF3 promotes the inclusion of exon 2. To further validate the role of SRSF3 in CD19 splicing we mined the publicly available GSE52834 dataset where 22 RNA binding proteins were knocked down in the GM19238 lymphoblastoid cell line. Of all siRNAs tested, only the anti-SRSF3 siRNA caused an increase in exon 2 skipping, suggesting that SRSF3 is indeed the key regulator of CD19 splicing.

Interestingly, SRSF3 has been shown to interact with PSIP1, a cofactor known to "read" modified histone H3K36me3 (Pradeepa et al., 2012), suggesting a convergence of splicing-based and epigenetics mechanisms. Indeed, exonic regions in genomic DNA are enriched for H3K36me3, and knockdown of Setd2, the H3K36 methyltransferase, results in changes in exon inclusion (Luco et al., 2010; Brown et al., 2012; Hnilicova and Stanek, 2011). Thus, we are currently investigating the connection between the H3K36me3 marks in the CD19 locus and alternative splicing of CD19. Our data could suggest a method of restoring full-length CD19 expression in immunotherapy-resistant cancers using epigenetic drugs.

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Disclosures

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.