Inhibition of ERRα suppresses epithelial mesenchymal transition of triple negative breast cancer cells by directly targeting fibronectin

// Ying-Min Wu 1, * , Zhuo-Jia Chen 2, * , Hao Liu 3 , Wei-Dong Wei 2 , Lin-Lin Lu 1 , Xiang-Ling Yang 4, 5 , Wei-Ting Liang 2 , Tao Liu 2 , Huan-Liang Liu 4, 5 , Jun Du 1 , Hong-Sheng Wang 1 1 Department of Microbial and Biochemical Pharmacy, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China 2 Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzhou 510060, China 3 Cancer Research Institute and Cancer Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 510095, China 4 Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Colorectal and Pelvic Floor Diseases, Guangdong Institute of Gastroenterology and The Sixth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510655, China 5 Institute of Human Virology and Key Laboratory of Tropical Disease Control of Ministry of Education, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510080, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Hong-Sheng Wang, e-mail: whongsh@mail.sysu.edu.cn , hongshengwang@foxmail.com Jun Du, e-mail: dujun@mail.sysu.edu.cn Keywords: ERRα, TNBC, EMT, fibronectin Received: April 15, 2015 Accepted: June 16, 2015 Published: June 26, 2015 ABSTRACT Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients have poor prognosis due to the aggressive metastatic behaviors. Our study reveals that expression of estrogen related receptor α (ERRα) is significantly ( p < 0.01) positively associated with high grade tumors and lymph node metastasis, while negatively correlated with overall survival (OS), in 138 TNBC patients. Targeted inhibition of ERRα by its inverse agonist XCT-790 or si-RNA obviously inhibits in vitro motility of TNBC cells. While over expression of ERRα triggers the invasion and migration of TNBC cells. Further, si-ERRα and XCT-790 inhibit the epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) of TNBC cells with increasing the expression of E-cadherin and decreasing fibronectin (FN) and vimentin. While XCT-790 has no effect on the expression of EMT related transcription factors such as Snail or Slug. Further, inhibitors of MAPK, PI3K/Akt, NF-κB signal molecules, which are activated by XCT-790, can not attenuate the suppression effects of XCT-790 on EMT. Alternatively, luciferase reporter gene assays and ChIP analysis indicate that ERRα can directly bind with FN promoter at ERR response element-3 (ERRE-1), ERRE-3, and ERRE-4, while XCT-790 reduces this bond. In vivo data show that ERRα expression is significantly ( p < 0.05) correlated with FN in clinical TNBC patients. In MDA-MB-231 tumor xenograft models, XCT-790 decreases the expression of FN, inhibits the growth and lung metastasis, and suppresses the EMT. Our results demonstrate that ERRα functions as a metastasis stimulator and its targeted inhibition may be a new therapeutic strategy for TNBC treatment.