Impact of HDAC6-mediated progesterone receptor expression on the response of breast cancer cells to hormonal therapy

Modulation of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) expression, as well as their emerging functional crosstalk, remains a potential approach for enhancing the response to hormonal therapy in breast cancer. Aberrant epigenetic alterations induced by histone deacetylases (HDACs) were massively implicated in dysregulating the function of hormone receptors in breast cancer. Although much is known about the regulation of ER signaling by HDAC, the precise role of HDAC in modulating the expression of PR and its impact on the outcomes of hormonal therapy is poorly defined. Here, we demonstrate the involvement of HDAC6 in regulating PR expression in breast cancer cells. The correlation between HDAC6 and hormone receptors was investigated in patients’ tissues by immunohistochemistry (n = 80) and publicly available data (n = 3260) from breast cancer patients. We explored the effect of modulating the expression of HDAC6 as well as its catalytic inhibition on the level of hormone receptors by a variety of molecular analyses, including Western blot, immunofluorescence, Real-time PCR, RNA-seq analysis and chromatin immunoprecipitation. Based on our in-silico and immunohistochemistry analyses, HDAC6 levels were negatively correlated with PR status in breast cancer tissues. The downregulation of HDAC6 enhanced the expression of PR-B in hormone receptor-positive and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells. The selective targeting of HDAC6 by tubacin resulted in the enrichment of the H3K9 acetylation mark at the PGR-B gene promoter region and enhanced the expression of PR-B. Additionally, transcriptomic analysis of tubacin-treated cells revealed enhanced activity of acetyltransferase and growth factor signaling pathways, along with the enrichment of transcription factors involved in the transcriptional activity of ER, underscoring the crucial role of HDAC6 in regulating hormone receptors. Notably, the addition of HDAC6 inhibitor potentiated the effects of anti-ER and anti-PR drugs mainly in TNBC cells. Together, these data highlight the role of HDAC6 in regulating PR expression and provide a promising therapeutic approach for boosting breast cancer sensitivity to hormonal therapy.