Chromosomal instability and centrosome defects in cancer cells

Link unraveled between chromosomal instability and centrosome defects in cancer cells (6/7/09)

In a new study, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists disprove a century-old theory about why cancer cells often have too many or too few chromosomes, and show that the actual reason may hold the key to a novel approach to cancer therapy.

Since the late 19th century, scientists have attributed the surplus or shortage of intact chromosomes in cancer cells to a kind of fragmentation in cell division: instead of dividing neatly into two identical daughter cells, as normal cells do, cancer cells were thought to frequently split into three or four cells, each with a motley assortment of chromosomes. This explosive division was thought to occur because many cancer cells have extra centrosomes, tiny circular structures that help pairs of chromosomes line up in preparation for cell division. ...

The way that extra centrosomes do cause chromosome instability, Ganem and his colleagues have discovered, is by setting up a tug-of-war for chromosomes that are eventually caught between newly forming daughter cells of a dividing cancer cell. In normal cells, which have two centrosomes, division occurs as the pairs of chromosomes split neatly apart, like halves of a zipper, each set moving into one of the daughter cells. The extra centrosomes in cancer cells exert an unequal pull on some chromosomes, causing the daughter cells to inherit an irregular number of them – explaining, in part, why tumors are often filled with cells of varying quantities of chromosomes.

Research abstract:

A mechanism linking extra centrosomes to chromosomal instability

Chromosomal instability (CIN) is a hallmark of many tumours and correlates with the presence of extra centrosomes. However, a direct mechanistic link between extra centrosomes and CIN has not been established. It has been proposed that extra centrosomes generate CIN by promoting multipolar anaphase, a highly abnormal division that produces three or more aneuploid daughter cells. Here we use long-term live-cell imaging to demonstrate that cells with multiple centrosomes rarely undergo multipolar cell divisions, and the progeny of these divisions are typically inviable. Thus, multipolar divisions cannot explain observed rates of CIN. In contrast, we observe that CIN cells with extra centrosomes routinely undergo bipolar cell divisions, but display a significantly increased frequency of lagging chromosomes during anaphase. To define the mechanism underlying this mitotic defect, we generated cells that differ only in their centrosome number. We demonstrate that extra centrosomes alone are sufficient to promote chromosome missegregation during bipolar cell division.