Enhancer recruitment of transcription repressors RUNX1 and TLE3 by mis-expressed FOXC1 blocks differentiation in acute myeloid leukemia

oleh: Fabrizio Simeoni, Isabel Romero-Camarero, Francesco Camera, Fabio M.R. Amaral, Oliver J. Sinclair, Evangelia K. Papachristou, Gary J. Spencer, Michael Lie-A-Ling, Georges Lacaud, Daniel H. Wiseman, Jason S. Carroll, Tim C.P. Somervaille

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Elsevier 2021-09-01

Deskripsi

Summary: Despite absent expression in normal hematopoiesis, the Forkhead factor FOXC1, a critical mesenchymal differentiation regulator, is highly expressed in ∼30% of HOXAhigh acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cases to confer blocked monocyte/macrophage differentiation. Through integrated proteomics and bioinformatics, we find that FOXC1 and RUNX1 interact through Forkhead and Runt domains, respectively, and co-occupy primed and active enhancers distributed close to differentiation genes. FOXC1 stabilizes association of RUNX1, HDAC1, and Groucho repressor TLE3 to limit enhancer activity: FOXC1 knockdown induces loss of repressor proteins, gain of CEBPA binding, enhancer acetylation, and upregulation of nearby genes, including KLF2. Furthermore, it triggers genome-wide redistribution of RUNX1, TLE3, and HDAC1 from enhancers to promoters, leading to repression of self-renewal genes, including MYC and MYB. Our studies highlight RUNX1 and CEBPA transcription factor swapping as a feature of leukemia cell differentiation and reveal that FOXC1 prevents this by stabilizing enhancer binding of a RUNX1/HDAC1/TLE3 transcription repressor complex to oncogenic effect.