ERRalpha mediates metabolic adaptations that drive lapatinib resistance in breast cancer (gene expression profiles). Homo sapiens

Ablation of ERRalpha significantly delays ERBB2-induced mammary tumorigenesis and ERRalpha regulates genes of the ERBB2 amplicon. To further investigate the relationship between ERRalpha activity and RTK signaling, we depleted ERRalpha in SKBr3 cells upon serum starvation, EGF treatment or heregulin treatment. Inhibition of ERBB2 signaling using the RTK inhibitor lapatinib impacts on ERRalpha stability. Since we have shown that the development of lapatinib-resistance restaures the expression of ERRalpha in breast cancer cells, we performed depletion of ERRalpha in SKBr3 cells that have developped resistance to lapatinib treatment in order to identify a potential reprogramming of ERRa transcriptional activity associated to lapatinib resistance, Overall design: For the study of growth factor effec on ERRalpha activity, total RNA was obtained from human SKBr3 breast cancer cells cultured in DMEM deprived of FBS (starved) for 24 hours and treated with PBS, EGF (100uM) or Heregulin (100uM) for an additional 24h. Cells were transfected with siRNA against ERRalpha or with siControl for 60 hours prior to harvesting. For the effect of ERRalpha in lapatinib resistance cells, parental SKBr3 cells (pSKBr3) and Lapatinib-resistant cells (LRSKBr3, maintained in 2uM lapatinib) were transfected with siControl (siC) or siERRalpha for 60 hours prior to harvesting and RNA extraction