Histone deacetylases (HDACs) are evolutionary conserved enzymes which operate by removing acetyl groups from histones and other protein regulatory factors, with functional consequences on chromatin remodeling and gene expression profiles. We provide here a review on the recent knowledge accrued on the zinc-dependent HDAC protein family across different species, tissues, and human pathologies, specifically focusing on the role of HDAC inhibitors as anti-cancer agents. We will investigate the chemical specificity of different HDACs and discuss their role in the human interactome as members of chromatin-binding and regulatory complexes.

MYCN oncogene amplification is frequently observed in aggressive childhood neuroblastoma. Using an unbiased large-scale mutagenesis screen in neuroblastoma-prone transgenic mice, we identify a single germline point mutation in the transcriptional corepressor Runx1t1, which abolishes MYCN-driven tumorigenesis. This loss-of-function mutation disrupts a highly conserved zinc finger domain within Runx1t1. Deletion of one Runx1t1 allele in an independent Runx1t1 knockout mouse model is also sufficient to prevent MYCN-driven neuroblastoma development, and reverse ganglia hyperplasia, a known pre-requisite for tumorigenesis. Silencing RUNX1T1 in human neuroblastoma cells decreases colony formation in vitro, and inhibits tumor growth in vivo. Moreover, RUNX1T1 knockdown inhibits the viability of PAX3-FOXO1 fusion-driven rhabdomyosarcoma and MYC-driven small cell lung cancer cells. Despite the role of Runx1t1 in MYCN-driven tumorigenesis neither gene directly regulates the other. We show RUNX1T1 forms part of a transcriptional LSD1-CoREST3-HDAC repressive complex recruited by HAND2 to enhancer regions to regulate chromatin accessibility and cell-fate pathway genes.

Neuroblastoma (NB) is one of the most frequently occurring neurogenic extracranial solid cancers in childhood and infancy. Over the years, many pieces of evidence suggested that NB development is controlled by gene expression dysregulation. These unleashed programs that outline NB cancer cells make them highly dependent on specific tuning of gene expression, which can act co-operatively to define the differentiation state, cell identity, and specialized functions. The peculiar regulation is mainly caused by genetic and epigenetic alterations, resulting in the dependency on a small set of key master transcriptional regulators as the convergence point of multiple signalling pathways. In this review, we provide a comprehensive blueprint of transcriptional regulation bearing NB initiation and progression, unveiling the complexity of novel oncogenic and tumour suppressive regulatory networks of this pathology. Furthermore, we underline the significance of multi-target therapies against these hallmarks, showing how novel approaches, together with chemotherapy, surgery, or radiotherapy, can have substantial antineoplastic effects, disrupting a wide variety of tumorigenic pathways through combinations of different treatments.

Neuroblastoma (NB) is one of the primary causes of death for pediatric malignancies. Given the high heterogeneity in NB’s mutation landscape, optimizing individualized therapies is still challenging. In the context of genomic alterations, MYCN amplification is the most correlated event with poor outcomes. MYCN is involved in the regulation of several cellular mechanisms, including cell cycle. Thus, studying the influence of MYCN overexpression in the G1/S transition checkpoint of the cell cycle may unveil novel druggable targets for the development of personalized therapeutical approaches. Here, we show that high expression of E2F3 and MYCN correlate with poor prognosis in NB despite the RB1 mRNA levels. Moreover, we demonstrate through luciferase reporter assays that MYCN bypasses RB function by incrementing E2F3-responsive promoter activity. We showed that MYCN overexpression leads to RB inactivation by inducing RB hyperphosphorylation during the G1 phase through cell cycle synchronization experiments. Moreover, we generated two MYCN-amplified NB cell lines conditionally knockdown (cKD) for the RB1 gene through a CRISPRi approach. Indeed, RB KD did not affect cell proliferation, whereas cell proliferation was strongly influenced when a non-phosphorylatable RB mutant was expressed. This finding revealed the dispensable role of RB in regulating MYCN-amplified NB’s cell cycle. The described genetic interaction between MYCN and RB1 provides the rationale for using cyclin/CDK complexes inhibitors in NBs carrying MYCN amplification and relatively high levels of RB1 expression.