No abstract

[Keywords: TEAD; YAP; CTGF; Hippo; transcription, cancer] Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.

Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) binding to the TNF receptor (TNFR) potentially initiates apoptosis and activates the transcription factor nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappaB), which suppresses apoptosis by an unknown mechanism. The activation of NF-kappaB was found to block the activation of caspase-8. TRAF1 (TNFR-associated factor 1), TRAF2, and the inhibitor-of-apoptosis (IAP) proteins c-IAP1 and c-IAP2 were identified as gene targets of NF-kappaB transcriptional activity. In cells in which NF-kappaB was inactive, all of these proteins were required to fully suppress TNF-induced apoptosis, whereas c-IAP1 and c-IAP2 were sufficient to suppress etoposide-induced apoptosis. Thus, NF-kappaB activates a group of gene products that function cooperatively at the earliest checkpoint to suppress TNF-alpha-mediated apoptosis and that function more distally to suppress genotoxic agent-mediated apoptosis.

Many cells are resistant to stimuli that can induce apoptosis, but the mechanisms involved are not fully understood. The activation of the transcription factor nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kappaB) by tumor necrosis factor (TNF), ionizing radiation, or daunorubicin (a cancer chemotherapeutic compound), was found to protect from cell killing. Inhibition of NF-kappaB nuclear translocation enhanced apoptotic killing by these reagents but not by apoptotic stimuli that do not activate NF-kappaB. These results provide a mechanism of cellular resistance to killing by some apoptotic reagents, offer insight into a new role for NF-kappaB, and have potential for improvement of the efficacy of cancer therapies.