Abstract A013: DMP1β, an alternative splice isoform of tumor suppressor hDMP1 locus, has oncogenic properties in breast cancer
Authors: Maglic Dejan , Kendig Robert , Cline Mark , Sui Guangchao 
Published: May 2015

Despite recent advances in therapeutic approaches and early detection, breast cancer remains significant health care burden in many developing countries. In fact, it has been suggested that up to ~30% of breast cancer cases are overdiagnosed as a result of early detection mammography screening. This finding poses a hypothesis that better patient stratification using prognostic/predictive indicators, especially for the patients with early diagnosis, would provide significant improvement in clinical management and reduce health care cost.

Our recent work identified Dmp1 as a critical tumor suppressor in breast cancer. Dmp1 is a transcription factor that induces cell cycle arrest and senescence by activating the p14ARF-p53 pathway. Overexpression of Her2/neu activates the Dmp1 promoter via PI3K-Akt-NFκB pathway leading to increase of p53 target genes. Loss of Dmp1 accelerates mammary tumor development in MMTV-neu mouse model without difference between Dmp1+/- and Dmp1-/- genotypes. Human DMP1 locus on 7q21 is hemizygously deleted in ~42% of breast carcinomas, which is mutually exclusive of INK4a/ARF or p53 inactivation. In the cases with hemizygous DMP1 deletion, the other DMP1 allele remains wild-type without mutation or promoter hypermethylation, which suggests that DMP1 is haploinsufficient tumor suppressor.

The hDMP1 locus encodes three distinct transcripts via alternative splicing of pre-mRNA at Exon 10. The bona fide tumor suppressor protein is named DMP1α, while the two other transcripts without known biological function were named DMP1β and DMP1γ. The qPCR analysis of 46 matched breast cancer samples revealed that 30% of tumor samples have splicing alteration of DMP1 to increase DMP1β isoform. Importantly, the patients with high DMP1β/α ratio in tumor samples had shorter relapse-free survival compared to those patients without splicing alteration. Furthermore, DMP1β/α ratio was increased in MMTV-neu mouse mammary tumors. Immunohistochemistry of 50 breast tumor samples showed that DMP1β protein is overexpressed which was also associated with shorter relapse-free survival.

Expression of DMP1β in non-tumorigenic breast epithelial cell line, MCF10A, significantly increased the rate of cell proliferation and size of the mammospheres in Matrigel©. Knockdown of the endogenous DMP1β inhibits proliferation of breast cancer cell lines. To ascertain role of DMP1β in development of breast cancer in vivo, we developed a MMTV-DMP1β mouse model. The mammary glands from MMTV-DMP1β female mice show dysplastic morphological changes in the epithelium with multifocal tumors at 18 months of age. The tumor tissue and surrounding mammary glands were hyperproliferative as they expressed high levels of Ki67 and Cyclin D1.

Overall, we provide evidence that alternative splicing to increase DMP1β expression leads to proliferation of human cells and mouse mammary gland and offers poor prognosis for breast cancer patients.

Citation Format: Dejan Maglic, Robert Kendig, Mark Cline, Guangchao Sui. DMP1β, an alternative splice isoform of tumor suppressor hDMP1 locus, has oncogenic properties in breast cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Breast Cancer Research: Genetics, Biology, and Clinical Applications; Oct 3-6, 2013; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Res 2013;11(10 Suppl):Abstract nr A013.