MPC1, a key gene in cancer metabolism, is regulated by COUPTFII in human prostate cancer

// Leiming Wang 1 , Mafei Xu 1 , Jun Qin 2 , Shih-Chieh Lin 1 , Hui-Ju Lee 1 , Sophia Y. Tsai 1 , Ming-Jer Tsai 1 1 Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA 2 Institute of Health Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai JiaoTong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200031, China Correspondence to: Sophia Y. Tsai, e-mail: stsai@bcm.edu Ming-Jer Tsai, e-mail: mtsai@bcm.edu Keywords: chicken ovalbumin upstream promoter-transcription factor II (COUP-TFII), mitochondrial pyruvate carrier 1 (MPC1), prostate cancer, glycolysis, tumor growth Received: November 25, 2015 Accepted: January 29, 2016 Published: February 15, 2016 ABSTRACT Mitochondrial pyruvate carrier 1 (MPC1) and MPC 2 form a transporter complex in cells to control pyruvate transportation into mitochondria. Reduced expression of MPC1 disrupts the transporter function, induces metabolic shift to increase glycolysis, and thus plays important roles in several diseases, including cancer. However, the role of MPC1 in prostate cancer and the underlying mechanism causing the down-regulation of MPC1 in tumor cells remain to be defined. Here, we show that MPC1 serves as a critical regulator of glycolysis in prostate cancer cells, which in turn controls cancer cell growth, invasion, and the tumorigenic capability. More importantly, we identified that chicken ovalbumin upstream promoter-transcription factor II (COUP-TFII), a steroid receptor superfamily member, transcriptionally regulates the expression of MPC1. We further demonstrate that COUP-TFII, which is upregulated in the prostate cancer patient, regulates MPC1 and glycolysis to promote tumor growth and metastasis. Our findings reveal that COUP-TFII represses MPC1 expression in prostate cancer cells to facilitate a metabolism switch to increase glycolysis and promote cancer progression. This observation raises an intriguing possibility of targeting COUP-TFII to modulate cancer cell metabolism for prostate cancer intervention.