Effect of HORMAD1 and CT83 Cancer/Testis Gene expression on human mammary epithelial cell line (HMLE)

Breast cancer is the most prevalent type of cancer in women worldwide. Within breast tumors, the basal-like subtype has the worst prognosis and no dedicated therapy, prompting the need for new tools to understand, detect, and treat these tumors. Certain germline-restricted genes show aberrant expression in tumors and are known as Cancer/Testis genes; their misexpression has diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Here we designed a new approach to examine Cancer/Testis gene misexpression in breast tumors. We identify several new markers in Luminal and HER-2 positive tumors, some of which predict response to chemotherapy. We then use machine learning to identify the two Cancer/Testis genes most associated with basal-like breast tumors: HORMAD1 and CT83. We show that these genes are expressed by tumor cells and not by the microenvironment, and that they are not expressed by normal breast progenitors; in other words, their activation occurs de novo. We find these genes are epigenetically repressed by DNA methylation, and that their activation upon DNA demethylation is irreversible, providing a memory of past epigenetic disturbances. Basal-like tumors expressing both genes have a poorer outcome than tumors expressing either gene alone or neither gene. Simultaneous expression of both genes in breast cells in vitro has a synergistic effect that increases stemness and activates a transcriptional profile also observed in double-positive tumors. Therefore, we reveal a functional cooperation between Cancer/Testis genes in basal breast tumors; these findings have consequences for the understanding, diagnosis, and therapy of the breast tumors with the worst outcomes. Overall design: To investigate the function HORMAD1 and CT83 in HMLE cell line, and their eventual cooperation, we established 4 HMLE-derived cell lines overexpressing Control, HORMAD1, CT83 or HORMAD1 and CT83 transgenes. Cell lines were selected using puroResistance gene.