Fancd2 Deficiency Impairs Autophagy Via Deregulating The Ampk/Foxo3a/Akt Pathway

Fanconi anemia (FA) is a genetic disease characterized by bone narrow failure and high risk of malignancy. The disease is due to a deficiency in the FA DNA repair pathway. Impaired function of the FA pathway leads to a decrease in survival, self-renewal and function of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). Previous reports have shown that FOXO3a directs a protective autophagy program for HSCs. Autophagy is an intracellular degradation system that enables cell to survive during stress like nutriment deprivation or oxidative stress by recycling damage proteins and organelles like mitochondria. Our laboratory has shown that FA-deficient cells are hypersensitive to oxidative stress and that FANCD2/FOXO3a interaction directs anti-oxidative response and cell survival. The FANCD2/FOXO3a axis could play a role in the protective autophagy activity in HSCs. For these reasons, we decided to study autophagy in the context of FANCD2-deficient (FA-D2) human lymphoblast cells exposed to oxidative stress. Interestingly, we observed an impaired activation of autophagy in the FA-D2 cells, detected by LC3-II immunoblot and flow cytometry, compared to FANCD2-corrected (control) cells. We found an increased necroapoptosis as soon as 1 hour after H2O2 treatment in FA-D2 cells. Paradoxically, we observed a profound decrease in the activity of the mTORC1 complex (as determined by S6 and S6k1 phosphorylation) in FA-D2 cells. In order to explain this autophagy deregulation, we determined the activation of AKT known to up-regulate mTORC1 activity. AKT activation (monitored by phospho-ser473) was significantly decreased in FA-D2 cells compared to control cells. Consequently, FOXO3a was over-activated in FA-D2 cells after H2O2 treatment. Consistently, we found markedly increased activation of AMPK known to initiate and sustain FOXO3a activation. Since AKT controls the expression of p62/SQSTM1, a protein involved in autophagy by addressing the damaged proteins/organelles to autophagic vesicles, we next examined the level of p62 in FA-D2 cells. In contradiction with the impaired autophagy in FA-D2 cells, we observed a decrease of p62 protein compared to corrected cells. To ensure that p62 protein decrease was not due to autophagy activity, we examined p62 transcription and found that the level of p62 mRNA was significantly decreased in FA-D2 cells. Our study thus identifies a deregulated AMPK/FOXO3a/AKT pathway in FA hematopoietic cells, and reveals an impaired autophagy process in which over-activated AMPK initiates FOXO3a activation that in turn inactivates AKT leading to down-regulation of p62. Thus, impaired autophagy may play a causal role in the hypersensitivity of FA-deficient cells to oxidative stress.