Abstract 3031: Replication stress and DNA damage promote genomic instability in near-tetraploid colorectal cancer cells

Proceedings: AACR 106th Annual Meeting 2015; April 18-22, 2015; Philadelphia, PA Aneuploidy represents a hallmark of most solid tumours, and potentially has a causal role in carcinogenesis. Also, cancer cells exhibit high rates of chromosome missegregation, which leads to chromosomal instability (CIN). However, a large amount of tumours present near-triploid karyotypes likely to go through a tetraploid transient stage. Here, by using DLD-1 isogenic diploid and tetraploid cell lines generated by single cell FACS-sorting, we aimed at exploring how polyploidization affects cellular functions and whether tetraploid per se generates CIN in a genomically stable background. First, gene expression and subsequent gene set enrichment analysis revealed that genes involved in the machinery of the DNA synthesis and replication, such as MCM2 and RRM2, and genes involved in cell cycle, were significantly upregulated in near-tetraploid cells compared to their diploid counterparts. Functionally, polyploidy cells exhibited replication stress, as indicated by higher levels of pCHK1, RPA and 53BP1 foci, which resulted in increased DNA damage in S- and M-phase. In addition, tetraploid cells displayed impaired proliferative capabilities as a consequence of a cell cycle delay confirmed by BrdU pulse and flow cytometry. Furthermore, near-tetraploid clones showed a higher amount of intracellular karyotypic heterogeneity due to the higher frequency of micronuclei formation compared to their diploid counterparts. In fact, polyploid cells displayed an increased tendency of abnormal anaphase events, including lagging chromosomes and acentric fragments. Interestingly, these heterogeneous cellular populations showed strengthen migratory capabilities and preliminary experiments suggested an increment in tumor invasiveness too. Taken together, our data suggest that near-tetraploid cells systematically undergo replication stress, which can be responsible for the increased levels of genomic instability. Citation Format: Isabel Quintanilla, Darawalee Wangsa, Markus Brown, Amaia Ercilla, Greg Klus, Maria Vila, Juan Jose Lozano, Zoltan Szallsi, Neus Agell, Antoni Castells, Thomas Ried, Jordi Camps. Replication stress and DNA damage promote genomic instability in near-tetraploid colorectal cancer cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 3031. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-3031