Abstract 373: Transcriptional and post-transcriptional positive regulatory loops between HIF-1a and the RNA-Binding protein hnRNPA18
Authors: Solano-Gonzalez Eduardo , Carrier France 
Published: March 2024

Hypoxia, the scarcity of oxygen, is a hallmark of solid tumors to which they adapt by activating the hypoxia-inducible transcription factor 1 (HIF-1). HIF activates the transcription of genes bearing hypoxia responsive elements (RE) in their promoter regions including genes related to angiogenesis, glucose metabolism, cell proliferation, survival, invasion, and metastasis. The HIF-1 pathway is thus an attractive target to prevent cancer aggressiveness and improve the effectiveness of cancer therapy. HIF-1α activity is known to be mainly regulated through post-translational modification by prolyl hydroxylase domain (PHD) enzymes, but accumulating evidence indicate that it is also regulated by other mechanisms such as transcriptional initiation, translational initiation, protein-protein interaction, post-translational modifications and post-transcriptionally, primarily through the action of trans-acting factors (noncoding RNAs and RNA-binding proteins) that interact with the HIF-1α mRNA to regulate its decay and translational rates. We recently identified the RNA binding protein hnRNP A18 as a regulator of HIF-1α translation under hypoxic conditions. hnRNP A18 is a nuclear stress responsive protein that translocates to the cytosol in response to cellular stress including hypoxia to bind to a recognition motif in the 3’UTR of its targeted transcripts including HIF-1α to stabilize the transcripts and increase their translation. Using a bicistronic reporter plasmid containing a HIF-1α internal ribosome entry site (IRES) we now show that hnRNP A18 can also regulate HIF-1α through its IRES in the 5’UTR. In fact, cells expressing hnRNP A18 significantly increase translation of a reporter CAT protein under the control of HIF-1α IRES in the presence of the hypoxia mimetic agent CoCl2. On the other hand, deletion of hnRNP A18 prevents the translation of the CAT reporter protein even in the presence of CoCl2. Moreover, we also identified several HIF-1α REs in hnRNP A18 promoter. Two of the predicted HIF-1α REs, located at -57 and -226 upstream of the hnRNP A18 start codon were validated as bonafide HIF-1α binding sites by Electromobility Shift Assay with recombinant HIF-1α protein and by Chromatin Immunoprecipitation assay in human pancreatic cancer cells Panc 01. These data thus indicate that a positive regulatory loop between hnRNP A18 and HIF1-1α exist to amplify HIF-1α expression under cellular stress. hnRNP A18 can upregulate HIF1α protein expression by stabilizing its transcript at the 3’UTR and by binding to its IRES. On the other hand, HIF-1α can upregulate hnRNP A18 by binding to its proximal promoter. Targeting hnRNP A18 could thus provide a new mechanism to regulate HIF-1α expression and sensitize cancer cells to therapies.

Citation Format: Eduardo Solano-Gonzalez, France Carrier. Transcriptional and post-transcriptional positive regulatory loops between HIF-1a and the RNA-Binding protein hnRNPA18 [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 373.