Inhibiting β-catenin disables nucleolar functions in triple-negative breast cancer

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients with upregulated Wnt/beta -catenin signaling often have poor clinical prognoses. During pathological examinations of breast cancer sections stained for beta -catenin, we made the serendipitous observation that relative to non-TNBC, specimens from TNBC patients have a greater abundance of nucleoli. There was a remarkable direct relationship between nuclear beta -catenin and greater numbers of nucleoli in TNBC tissues. These surprising observations spurred our investigations to decipher the differential functional relevance of the nucleolus in TNBC versus non-TNBC cells. Comparative nucleolar proteomics revealed that the majority of the nucleolar proteins in TNBC cells were potential targets of beta -catenin signaling. Next, we undertook an analysis of the nucleolar proteome in TNBC cells in response to beta -catenin inhibition. This effort revealed that a vital component of pre-rRNA processing, LAS1 like ribosome biogenesis factor (LAS1L) was significantly decreased in the nucleoli of beta -catenin inhibited TNBC cells. Here we demonstrate that LAS1L protein expression is significantly elevated in TNBC patients, and it functionally is important for mammary tumor growth in xenograft models and enables invasive attributes. Our observations highlight a novel function for beta -catenin in orchestrating nucleolar activity in TNBCs.

Automated summary

Triple-negative breast cancer patients with upregulated Wnt/beta-catenin signaling often have poor clinical prognoses. A greater abundance of nucleoli was observed in specimens from TNBC patients compared to non-TNBC, showing a direct relationship with nuclear beta-catenin. Further investigations revealed the differential functional relevance of the nucleolus in TNBC versus non-TNBC cells.