Homo sapiens Epigenomics. Homo sapiens

Vitamin D induces anti-proliferative and differentiating effects in prostate cancer. Thus calcitriol, the hormonally active form of Vitamin D, and its analogs have been extensively studied in prostate cancer cells. Yet despite its importance, relatively little is known about the genome-scale mechanisms by which Vitamin D, through its cognate nuclear vitamin D receptor (VDR), exerts its regulatory functions at the genomic level. In this study, we defined VDR transcriptional networks in the LNCaP prostate cancer cell line by mapping the genomic binding sites of VDR and by identifying differentially expressed genes upon calcitriol treatment. We found that VDR and androgen receptor (AR) antagonistically regulate a subset of cell cycle-related genes that are over-expressed in prostate cancer tumors. The expression balance of these genes is partially regulated through the competition dynamics between AR and VDR binding to shared cis-regulatory elements. On such shared elements, we found that FOXA1 mediates this competition by serving as a pioneering factor for both AR and VDR binding. We also found significant enrichment of AR-, VDR-, and AR/VDR overlapping binding sites in prostate cancer-associated single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) intervals identified from genome-wide association studies (GWAS), providing genetic evidence to link AR, VDR and their crosstalk to prostate cancer susceptibilities. In particular, we found that in a cis-regulatory element of the RFX6 gene implicated in prostate cancer progression, an allelic variant increases prostate cancer risk by switching the antagonism between AR and VDR into a synergistic interaction.