Authors
Lempiainen, J. K., Miachin, K., Liu, X., Yang, K., Horth, C., Bareke, E., Grinwald, M. F., Saintilnord, W. N., Wang, T., Majewski, J., Hirbe, A. C., Garcia, B. A.
Abstract
Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs) are aggressive sarcomas with limited therapeutic options. Loss of the Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), via inactivating mutations in SUZ12 or EED, occurs frequently in MPNSTs and is associated with poor prognosis. However, the downstream chromatin and signaling consequences of these mutations remain incompletely understood. Here, we show that PRC2 deficiency in MPNST cells induces coordinated chromatin remodeling, characterized by loss of repressive H3K27me3 and gain of activating marks, including H3K27ac and H3K36me2. Integrative epigenomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic profiling revealed that this chromatin reprogramming activates a fetal-like growth signature centered on insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) and its post-transcriptional regulators, Insulin-like Growth Factor 2 mRNA-Binding Protein (IGF2BP1-3). Functional studies demonstrate that PRC2-deficient cells are selectively dependent on IGF2 for proliferation, and that restoration of SUZ12 suppresses IGF2 expression and reduces growth. Analysis of human MPNST tumors confirms upregulation of the IGF2-IGF2BP axis in PRC2-deficient tumors, highlighting its clinical relevance. Together, these findings link PRC2 loss to activation of fetal growth factor-driven oncogenic signaling and identify IGF2 and its regulatory network as potential vulnerabilities in this aggressive tumor subtype.
Preprint server:
bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 07 Nov 2025.
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