Morgan A. Sammons

epigenetic landscape. These data indicate that epigenetic fate inflexibility may limit current immunotherapies.

Oncogene-induced senescence (OIS) and therapy-induced senescence (TIS), while tumor-suppressive, also promote procarcinogenic effects by activating the DNA damage response (DDR), which in turn induces inflammation. This inflammatory response prominently includes an array of cytokines known as the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Previous observations link the transcription-associated methyltransferase and oncoprotein MLL1 to the DDR, leading us to investigate the role of MLL1 in SASP expression. Our findings reveal direct MLL1 epigenetic control over proproliferative cell cycle genes: MLL1 inhibition represses expression of proproliferative cell cycle regulators required for DNA replication and DDR activation, thus disabling SASP expression. Strikingly, however, these effects of MLL1 inhibition on SASP gene expression do not impair OIS and, furthermore, abolish the ability of the SASP to enhance cancer cell proliferation. More broadly, MLL1 inhibition also reduces "SASP-like" inflammatory gene expression from cancer cells in vitro and in vivo independently of senescence. Taken together, these data demonstrate that MLL1 inhibition may be a powerful and effective strategy for inducing cancerous growth arrest through the direct epigenetic regulation of proliferation-promoting genes and the avoidance of deleterious OIS- or TIS-related tumor secretomes, which can promote both drug resistance and tumor progression.

Despite overwhelming evidence that transcriptional activation by TP53 is critical for its tumor suppressive activity, the mechanisms by which TP53 engages the genome in the context of chromatin to activate transcription are not well understood. Using a compendium of novel and existing genome-wide data sets, we examined the relationship between TP53 binding and the dynamics of the local chromatin environment. Our analysis revealed three distinct categories of TP53 binding events that differ based on the dynamics of the local chromatin environment. The first class of TP53 binding events occurs near transcriptional start sites (TSS) and is defined by previously characterized promoter-associated chromatin modifications. The second class comprises a large cohort of preestablished, promoter-distal enhancer elements that demonstrates dynamic histone acetylation and transcription upon TP53 binding. The third class of TP53 binding sites is devoid of classic chromatin modifications and, remarkably, fall within regions of inaccessible chromatin, suggesting that TP53 has intrinsic pioneer factor activity and binds within structurally inaccessible regions of chromatin. Intriguingly, these inaccessible TP53 binding sites feature several enhancer-like properties in cell types within the epithelial lineage, indicating that TP53 binding events include a group of "proto-enhancers" that become active enhancers given the appropriate cellular context. These data indicate that TP53, along with TP63, may act as pioneer factors to specify epithelial enhancers. Further, these findings suggest that rather than following a global cell-type invariant stress response program, TP53 may tune its response based on the lineage-specific epigenomic landscape.