Assessing FOXA1-driven mRNA processing in prostate cancer with Nanopore long-read sequencing

Despite advances in the diagnosis and treatment of early stage of prostate cancer (PC), there are few therapeutic options for end-stage metastatic castration-resistant PC. The disease is difficult to tackle in part due to considerable phenotypic heterogeneity, underpinned by genomic alterations within different oncogenes or tumor suppressors. FOXA1 is the sly key oncogene of PC. As a pioneer transcription factor, FOXA1 opens up chromatin for DNA binding by distinct factors to drive PC initiation and progression to metastasis. We recently revealed a novel role for FOXA1 in orchestrating alternative splicing regulation in PC impacting patient survival. However, to which extent FOXA1 may be considered a guardian of the transcriptome is still to be determined. In this talk will show you how we addressed this challenge exploiting direct mRNA Oxford Nanopore sequencing. In particular I will discuss our data on FOXA1-mediated regulation of co- and post-transcriptional mRNA processing in PC.