Intrinsically cationic and chiral C(γ)-substituted peptide nucleic acid (PNA) analogues have been synthesized in the form of γ(S)-ethyleneamino (eam)- and γ(S)-ethyleneguanidino (egd)-PNA with two carbon spacers from the backbone. The relative stabilization (ΔTm) of duplexes from modified cationic PNAs as compared to 2-aminoethylglycyl (aeg)-PNA is better with complementary DNA (PNA:DNA) than with complementary RNA (PNA:RNA). Inherently, PNA:RNA duplexes have higher stability than PNA:DNA duplexes, and the guanidino PNAs are superior to amino PNAs. The cationic PNAs were found to be specific toward their complementary DNA target as seen from their significantly lower binding with DNA having single base mismatch. The differential binding avidity of cationic PNAs was assessed by the displacement of DNA duplex intercalated ethidium bromide and gel electrophoresis. The live cell imaging of amino/guanidino PNAs demonstrated their ability to penetrate the cell membrane in 3T3 and MCF-7 cells, and cationic PNAs were found to be accumulated in the vicinity of the nuclear membrane in the cytoplasm. Fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) analysis of cell permeability showed the efficiency to be dependent upon the nature of cationic functional group, with guanidino PNAs being better than the amino PNAs in both cell lines. The results are useful to design new biofunctional cationic PNA analogues that not only bind RNA better but also show improved cell permeability.

DNA alkylating agents form the first line of cancer chemotherapy. They not only kill cells but also behave as potential carcinogens. MNU, a DNA methylating agent, is well known to induce mammary tumours in rodents. However, the mechanism of tumorigenesis is not well understood. Our study reports a novel role played by DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) in methylation damage-induced transformation using three-dimensional breast acinar cultures. Here, we report that exposure of breast epithelial cells to MNU inhibited polarisation at the basolateral domain, increased dispersal of the Golgi at the apical domain and induced an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-like phenotype as well as invasion. This altered Golgi phenotype correlated with impaired intracellular trafficking. Inhibition of DNA-PK resulted in almost complete reversal of the altered Golgi phenotype and partial rescue of the polarity defect and EMT-like phenotype. The results confirm that methylation damage-induced activation of DNA-PK is a major mechanism in mediating cellular transformation.This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.

BackgroundThe DNA damage checkpoint signalling cascade sense damaged DNA and coordinates cell cycle arrest, DNA repair, and/or apoptosis. However, it is still not well understood how the signalling system differentiates between different kinds of DNA damage. N-nitroso-N-ethylurea (NEU), a DNA ethylating agent induces both transversions and transition mutations.MethodsImmunoblot and comet assays were performed to detect DNA breaks and activation of the canonical checkpoint signalling kinases following NEU damage upto 2 hours. To investigate whether mismatch repair played a role in checkpoint activation, knock-down studies were performed while flow cytometry analysis was done to understand whether the activation of the checkpoint kinases was cell cycle phase specific. Finally, breast epithelial cells were grown as 3-dimensional spheroid cultures to study whether NEU can induce upregulation of vimentin as well as disrupt cell polarity of the breast acini, thus causing transformation of epithelial cells in culture.ResultsWe report a novel finding that NEU causes activation of major checkpoint signalling kinases, Chk1 and Chk2. This activation is temporally controlled with Chk2 activation preceding Chk1 phosphorylation, and absence of cross talk between the two parallel signalling pathways, ATM and ATR. Damage caused by NEU leads to the temporal formation of both double strand and single strand breaks. Activation of checkpoints following NEU damage is cell cycle phase dependent wherein Chk2 is primarily activated during G2-M phase whilst in S phase, there is immediate Chk1 phosphorylation and delayed Chk2 response. Surprisingly, the mismatch repair system does not play a role in checkpoint activation, at doses and duration of NEU used in the experiments. Interestingly, NEU caused disruption of the well-formed polarised spheroid archithecture and upregulation of vimentin in three-dimensional breast acini cultures of non-malignant breast epithelial cells upon NEU treatment indicating NEU to have the potential to cause early transformation in the cells.ConclusionNEU causes damage in mammalian cells in the form of double strand and single strand breaks that temporally activate the major checkpoint signalling kinases without the occurrence of cross-talk between the pathways. NEU also appear to cause transformation in three-dimensional spheroid cultures.

There is an urgent need for accurate, scalable, and cost-efficient experimental systems to model the complexity of the tumor microenvironment. Here, we detail how to fabricate and use the Metabolic Microenvironment Chamber (MEMIC) – a 3D-printed ex vivo model of intratumoral heterogeneity. A major driver of the cellular and molecular diversity in tumors is the accessibility to the blood stream that provides key resources such as oxygen and nutrients. While some tumor cells have direct access to these resources, many others must survive under progressively more ischemic environments as they reside further from the vasculature. The MEMIC is designed to simulate the differential access to nutrients and allows co-culturing different cell types, such as tumor and immune cells. This system is optimized for live imaging and other microscopy-based approaches, and it is a powerful tool to study tumor features such as the effect of nutrient scarcity on tumor-stroma interactions. Due to its adaptable design and full experimental control, the MEMIC provide insights into the tumor microenvironment that would be difficult to obtain via other methods. As a proof of principle, we show that cells sense gradual changes in metabolite concentration resulting in multicellular spatial patterns of signal activation and cell proliferation. To illustrate the ease of studying cell-cell interactions in the MEMIC, we show that ischemic macrophages reduce epithelial features in neighboring tumor cells. We propose the MEMIC as a complement to standard in vitro and in vivo experiments, diversifying the tools available to accurately model, perturb, and monitor the tumor microenvironment, as well as to understand how extracellular metabolites affect other processes such as wound healing and stem cell differentiation.

Breast cancer is the most devastating disease among females globally. Conventional chemotherapeutic regimen relies on the use of highly cytotoxic drugs as monotherapy and combination therapy leading to severe side effects to the patients as collateral damage. Moreover, combining hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs create erratic biodistribution and suboptimal medicinal outcome. Hence, packaging multiple drugs of diverse mechanisms of action and biodistribution for safe delivery into tumor tissues with optimal dosages is indispensable for next-generation breast cancer therapy. To address these, in this report, we describe a unique cisplatin-triggered self-assembly of linear polymer into 3D-spherical sub 200 nm particles. These nanoparticles comprise a hydrophobic (paclitaxel) and hydrophilic drug (cisplatin) simultaneously in a single particle. Molecular dynamics simulation revealed hydrophilic–hydrophilic interaction and interchain H-bonding as underlying mechanisms of self-assembly. Confocal microscopy studies evidently demonstrated that these novel nanoparticles can home into lysosomes in breast cancer cells, fragment subcellular nuclei, and prevent cell division, leading to improved breast cancer cell death compared to free drug combination. Moreover, 3D-breast tumor spheroids were reduced remarkably by the treatment of these nanoparticles within 24 h. These dual-drug-loaded self-assembled polymeric nanoparticles have prospective to be translated into a clinical strategy for breast cancer patients.