NCOR1 sustains CRC growth and protects from cellular senescence

The nuclear corepressor NCOR1 is a transcriptional repressor that regulates gene expression by associating with nuclear receptors or transcription factors such as AP-1 and NF-KB. The objective of this work was to determine how NCOR1 regulates proliferation and inflammatory response in human colorectal cancer cell lines. We observed that upon targeting NCOR1 expression from the use of shRNAs, Caco-2/15 and HT-29 colorectal cancer cells stopped proliferating with characteristics of being senescent. In addition, we noticed an induction of inflammatory molecules associated with SASP in these cells. We analyzed the transcriptome of shNCOR1_655 cells and identified the SOX2 pluripotency factor as being induced when the expression of NCOR1 is decreased. This transcriptome was also enriched in molecules normally associated with migration and invasion biological processes. mRNA profiles of shNonTarget (Control) and shNCOR1 (NCOR1 knockdown) HT-29 and Caco-2/15 CRC cells after 7 days of lentiviral infection (3 replicates/condition)