We report that the bromodomains of the histone acetyltransferases CREBBP/EP300 are critical to sustain the proliferation of human leukemia and lymphoma cell lines.
Among the 29 newly identified in-frame gene fusions, those involving MEF2D and ZNF384 were clinically relevant and were demonstrated to perturb B-cell differentiation, with EP300-ZNF384 inducing leukemia in mice.
We demonstrate that differential usage of the Kat3 coactivators, CREBBP/Creb Binding Protein (CBP) and EP300 (p300) by catenin, with increased CBP/catenin signaling at the expense of p300/catenin signaling, is mechanistically correlated with the increase in the leukemia stem/initiating-like population.
A role for EP300 in cancer has been implied by the fact that it is targeted by viral oncoproteins, it is fused to MLL in Leukaemia and two missense sequence alterations in EP300 were identified in epithelial malignancies.