Expression of p270 (ARID1A), a component of human SWI/SNF complexes, in human tumors

Human SWI/SNF complexes use the energy of ATP hydrolysis to remodel chromosomes and alter gene expression patterns. The activity of the complexes generally promotes tissue-specific gene expression and restricts cell proliferation. The ATPase that drives the complexes, BRG1, is essential for tumor suppression in mice and deficient in a variety of established human tumor cell lines. The complex contains at least 7 other core components, one of which is a large subunit designated p270. p270 RNA is expressed in all normal human tissues examined, but protein expression is severely reduced in at least 2 human tumor lines, C33A and T47D. We show here that loss of p270 in the C33A and T47D cell lines is evident at the RNA level as well as the protein level. The implication that p270 can be informatively screened at the RNA level made a high-efficiency cancer profiling array approach to screening human tumors feasible. Expression was screened in an array containing RNA-derived cDNA from 241 tumor and corresponding matched normal tissues from individual patients. p270 deficiency was observed at a higher overall frequency than BRG1 deficiency, but all tissues were not equally affected. Deficiency of p270 was observed most frequently in carcinomas of the breast and kidney. The results were most striking in kidney, where p270 expression was deficient in 30% of carcinoma samples screened. Screening of a panel of established human renal carcinoma-derived cell lines supports the frequency observed in the primary tumor tissue samples.