Poster Presentation 27th Lorne Cancer Conference 2015

Deciphering the role of caspase-2 in protecting against genetic instability and tumour supression. (#148)

Swati Dawar 1 2 , Loretta Dorstyn 1 2 , Joey Puccini 1 2 , Sharad Kumar 1 2
  1. Department of Haematology, Centre for Cancer Biology, SA Pathology, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia
  2. Division of Health Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia


Caspase-2, one of the most evolutionarily conserved of caspases, has been implicated in maintenance of genomic stability and tumor suppression. Caspase-2 deficient mice develop normally but show premature ageing traits and when challenged by certain stressors, succumb to enhanced tumor development and/or aneuploidy. To test how caspase-2 protects against genomic instability, we developed an ex vivo system for aneuploidy where primary splenocytes from caspase-2 deficient mice were exposed to anti mitotic drugs and followed up by live cell imaging. Our data show that caspase-2 deficiency leads to significantly enhanced aneuploidy and this is because of reduced cell death. Acute knockdown of caspase-2 recapitulated these results. Thus in the absence of caspase-2 an inhibition of death of cells with mitotic defects leads to aneuploidy. These results provide direct evidence that caspase-2 is necessary for deleting cells with mitotic aberrations.