Depletion of histone methyltransferase KMT9 inhibits lung cancer cell proliferation by inducing non-apoptotic cell death

• Published in: Cancer cell international Vol. 20; no. 1; p. 52
• Main Authors: Baumert, Hannah Maria, Metzger, Eric, Fahrner, Matthias, George, Julie, Thomas, Roman K, Schilling, Oliver, Schüle, Roland
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central 17-02-2020; BMC
• Subjects: A549; Adenocarcinoma; Apoptosis; Automation; Cell culture; Cell cycle; Cell death; Cell growth; Cell proliferation; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; DNA methylation; Epigenetics; Flow cytometry; Gene expression; Histone methyltransferase; KMT9; Lung cancer; Mass spectroscopy; Medical prognosis; Medical research; Non-small cell lung cancer; Organelles; Primary Research; Prostate; Prostate cancer; Proteins; Proteomes; Ribonucleic acid; RNA; Tumor cell lines; Tumors; KMT9; Transcriptomics; Lung cancer; A549; Non-small cell lung cancer; Proteomics; Epigenetics; Histone methyltransferase
• ISSN: 1475-2867; 1475-2867
• DOI: 10.1186/s12935-020-1141-2

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related death worldwide. Over the past 15 years no major improvement of survival rates could be accomplished. The recently discovered histone methyltransferase KMT9 that acts as epigenetic regulator of prostate tumor growth has now raised hopes of enabling new cancer therapies. In this study, we aimed to identify the function of KMT9 in lung cancer.
We unraveled the KMT9 transcriptome and proteome in A549 lung adenocarcinoma cells using RNA-Seq and mass spectrometry and linked them with functional cell culture, real-time proliferation and flow cytometry assays.
We show that KMT9α and -β subunits of KMT9 are expressed in lung cancer tissue and cell lines. Importantly, high levels of KMT9α correlate with poor patient survival. We identified 460 genes that are deregulated at the RNA and protein level upon knock-down of KMT9α in A549 cells. These genes cluster with proliferation, cell cycle and cell death gene sets as well as with subcellular organelles in gene ontology analysis. Knock-down of KMT9α inhibits lung cancer cell proliferation and induces non-apoptotic cell death in A549 cells.
The novel histone methyltransferase KMT9 is crucial for proliferation and survival of lung cancer cells harboring various mutations. Small molecule inhibitors targeting KMT9 therefore should be further examined as potential milestones in modern epigenetic lung cancer therapy.