A Cell-Free Assay To Screen for Compounds That Modulate the Fanconi/BRCA Pathway.

Fanconi anemia is a multi-gene cancer susceptibility and bone marrow failure syndrome. In the current model, at least eight proteins (FANCA, -B-C,-E, -F, -G, -L, -M) are part of a nuclear complex that is required for the S phase and DNA-damage dependent monoubiquitination of FANCD2. This event is thought to functionally link the FA complex proteins to major breast cancer susceptibility proteins BRCA1, BRCA2 (FANCD1), and the BRCA1-associated helicase Brip1(FANCJ). An understanding of the function of the FA protein network is incomplete not only because some FA proteins are still unidentified, but also because the functions of individual proteins may be interdependent and are difficult to assess out of context with the entire FA network. We recently developed a cell-free system to evaluate the function of the Fanconi/BRCA pathway proteins in an S phase context in Xenopus egg extracts (Sobeck, et al. 2006). Egg extracts are naturally cell-cycle synchronized and mimic the complex interplay of proteins that support cellular DNA replication and regulated DNA damage checkpoint activation. Intricate protein interactions can be assayed in egg extracts, even without knowing each of the components if there is a measurable endpoint. We tested the hypothesis that the mobility shift of FANCD2 could be used as an endpoint in cell-free assays to determine FA pathway function. We found that an antibody specific for the Xenopus FANCD2 protein detected a single band of the expected size in western blots of proteins separated by SDS-PAGE from unstimulated egg extracts. Addition of DNA substrates to extracts resulted in the appearance of a slower mobility form of FANCD2, consistent with the monoubiquitinated FANCD2-L isoform observed in human cells following DNA damage. We measured inhibition or stimulation of xFANCD2-L in the presence of a series of candidate compounds.

We found compounds that inhibit FANCD2-L, including curcumin, which was also identified in a cell-based assay as an inhibitor of FANCD2-L (Chirnomas, et al., 2006). Thus, this cell-free assay successfully mirrors the outcome obtained with a small molecule inhibitor of the FA/BRCA pathway in cell-based assays. This new approach is an improvement relative to cell-based screens because the extracts are fully synchronized, which maximizes the sensitivity of detection of S-phase events. Moreover, cell-free screens are rapid, inexpensive and well suited for semi- or high-throughput methods to identify small molecules that modulate the FA/BRCA DNA-damage response pathway.