Expression Regulation of the Metastasis-Promoting Protein InsP3-Kinase-A in Tumor Cells

Abstract Under physiologic conditions, the inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP3)-metabolizing, F-actin–bundling InsP3-kinase-A (ITPKA) is expressed only in neurons. Tumor cells that have gained the ability to express ITPKA show an increased metastatic potential due to the migration-promoting properties of ITPKA. Here we investigated the mechanism how tumor cells have gained the ability to reexpress ITPKA by using a breast cancer cell line (T47D) with no expression and a lung carcinoma cell line (H1299) with ectopic ITPKA expression. Cloning of a 1,250-bp ITPKA promoter fragment revealed that methylation of CpG islands was reduced in H1299 as compared with T47D cells, but DNA demethylation did not alter the expression of ITPKA. Instead, we showed that the repressor-element-1–silencing transcription factor (REST)/neuron-restrictive silencer factor (NRSF), which suppresses expression of neuronal genes in nonneuronal tissues, regulates expression of ITPKA. Knockdown of REST/NRSF induced expression of ITPKA in T47D cells, whereas its overexpression in H1299 cells strongly reduced the level of ITPKA. In T47D cells, REST/NRSF was bound to the RE-1 site of the ITPKA promoter and strongly reduced its activity. In H1299 cells, in contrast, expressing comparable REST/NRSF levels as T47D cells, REST/NRSF only slightly reduced ITPKA promoter activity. This reduced suppressor activity most likely results from expression of a dominant-negative isoform of REST/NRSF, REST4, which impairs binding of REST/NRSF to the RE-1 site. Thus, ITPKA may belong to the neuronal metastasis-promoting proteins whose ectopic reexpression in tumor cells is associated with impaired REST/NRSF activity. Mol Cancer Res; 9(4); 497–506. ©2011 AACR.