Pathways affected by asbestos exposure in normal and tumour tissue of lung cancer patients

Abstract

Background: Studies on asbestos-induced tumourigenesis have indicated the role of, e.g., reactive oxygen/nitrogen species, mitochondria, as well as NF-kappaB and MAPK signalling pathways. The exact molecular mechanisms contributing to asbestos-mediated carcinogenesis are, however, still to be characterized.

Methods: In this study, gene expression data analyses together with gene annotation data from the Gene Ontology (GO) database were utilized to identify pathways that are differentially regulated in lung and tumour tissues between asbestos-exposed and non-exposed lung cancer patients. Differentially regulated pathways were identified from gene expression data from 14 asbestos-exposed and 14 non-exposed lung cancer patients using custom-made software and Iterative Group Analysis (iGA). Western blotting was used to further characterize the findings, specifically to determine the protein levels of UBA1 and UBA7.

Results: Differences between asbestos-related and non-related lung tumours were detected in pathways associated with, e.g., ion transport, NF-kappaB signalling, DNA repair, as well as spliceosome and nucleosome complexes. A notable fraction of the pathways down-regulated in both normal and tumour tissue of the asbestos-exposed patients were related to protein ubiquitination, a versatile process regulating, for instance, DNA repair, cell cycle, and apoptosis, and thus being also a significant contributor of carcinogenesis. Even though UBA1 or UBA7, the early enzymes involved in protein ubiquitination and ubiquitin-like regulation of target proteins, did not underlie the exposure-related deregulation of ubiquitination, a difference was detected in the UBA1 and UBA7 levels between squamous cell carcinomas and respective normal lung tissue (p = 0.02 and p = 0.01) without regard to exposure status.

Conclusion: Our results indicate alterations in protein ubiquitination related both to cancer type and asbestos. We present for the first time pathway analysis results on asbestos-associated lung cancer, providing important insight into the most relevant targets for future research.

Figure 1

Presentation of asbestos-induced effects. Schematic presentation of asbestos-induced effects, modified from Upadhyay and Kamp [38]. Mechanisms or cellular compartments affected by asbestos-exposure according to the pathway analysis are marked with black dots.

Figure 2

Protein ubiquitination related differentially regulated processes. The dotted boxes represent GO terms that were down-regulated in both the normal and the tumour tissues of the exposed patients in comparison to the non-exposed using both the t-test and fold change based ranking. The grey boxes represent GO terms that were down-regulated using at least one of the tests.

Figure 3

Ion transport related differentially regulated processes. The dotted boxes represent GO terms that were up-regulated in both the normal and the tumour tissues of the exposed patients in comparison to the non-exposed using both the t-test and fold change based ranking. The grey boxes represent GO terms that were up-regulated using at least one of the tests.