MNK Inhibition Disrupts Mesenchymal Glioma Stem Cells and Prolongs Survival in a Mouse Model of Glioblastoma Jonathan B
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Published OnlineFirst June 30, 2016; DOI: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-16-0172 Signal Transduction Molecular Cancer Research MNK Inhibition Disrupts Mesenchymal Glioma Stem Cells and Prolongs Survival in a Mouse Model of Glioblastoma Jonathan B. Bell1, Frank D. Eckerdt1,2, Kristen Alley1, Lisa P. Magnusson1,2, Hridi Hussain1,2, Yingtao Bi3, Ahmet Dirim Arslan1,4, Jessica Clymer1,5, Angel A. Alvarez1, Stewart Goldman1,5, Shi-Yuan Cheng1, Ichiro Nakano6, Craig Horbinski1,2,7, Ramana V. Davuluri1,3, C. David James1,2, and Leonidas C. Platanias1,4,8 Abstract Glioblastoma multiforme remains the deadliest malignant a crucial effector for MNK-induced mRNA translation in cancer brain tumor, with glioma stem cells (GSC) contributing to treat- cells and a marker of transformation. Importantly, merestinib ment resistance and tumor recurrence. We have identified MAPK- inhibited growth of GSCs grown as neurospheres as determined interacting kinases (MNK) as potential targets for the GSC pop- by extreme limiting dilution analysis. When the effects of mer- ulation in glioblastoma multiforme. Isoform-level subtyping estinib were assessed in vivo using an intracranial xenograft mouse using The Cancer Genome Atlas revealed that both MNK genes model, improved overall survival was observed in merestinib- (MKNK1 and MKNK2) are upregulated in mesenchymal glioblas- treated mice. Taken together, these data provide strong preclinical toma multiforme as compared with other subtypes. Expression of evidence that pharmacologic MNK inhibition targets mesenchy- MKNK1 is associated with increased glioma grade and correlated mal glioblastoma multiforme and its GSC population. with the mesenchymal GSC marker, CD44, and coexpression of MKNK1 and CD44 predicts poor survival in glioblastoma multi- Implications: These findings raise the possibility of MNK forme. In established and patient-derived cell lines, pharmaco- inhibition as a viable therapeutic approach to target the mes- logic MNK inhibition using LY2801653 (merestinib) inhibited enchymal subtype of glioblastoma multiforme. Mol Cancer Res; phosphorylation of the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E, 14(10); 984–93. Ó2016 AACR. Introduction forme (2). A subpopulation of cancer stem cells, referred to as tumor-initiating cells (TIC) or glioma stem cells (GSC), has been Glioblastoma is the most common and deadliest primary brain identified in glioblastoma multiforme and other high-grade gli- tumor (1). Despite surgical resection, chemotherapy and radia- omas (3–6). GSCs expressing a mesenchymal gene signature are tion, there are no effective treatments for glioblastoma multi- particularly resistant to therapy, grow more rapidly than other subtypes, and express specific cancer stem cell markers (e.g., CD44; refs. 7–9). Developing strategies to target this resistant 1 Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Feinberg School of subpopulation of cells may lead to improved clinical outcomes. Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. 2Department of Neurological Surgery, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern Protein synthesis is a highly regulated process that contributes University,Chicago, Illinois. 3Department of Preventive Medicine, Fein- to oncogenesis and therapeutic resistance in glioblastoma multi- berg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. forme and other cancers (10–12). MNKs regulate protein synthe- 4Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, Fein- berg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. sis through phosphorylation of the eukaryotic translation initia- 5Division of Hematology/Oncology/Stem Cell Transplantation, tion factor 4E (eIF4E), a member of the eIF4F cap-binding Department of Pediatrics, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital complex (13, 14). Phosphorylation of eIF4E by MNKs leads to of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. 6Department of Neurosurgery and Com- prehensive Cancer Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, translation of a subset of oncogenic transcripts (15). Inhibition of Birmingham, Alabama. 7Department of Pathology, Feinberg School MNKs with small-molecule inhibitors or knockdown of MKNK1 of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. 8Department and MKNK2 disrupts growth of glioblastoma multiforme cells of Medicine, Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois. and prevents tumor growth in vivo (16, 17). However, few clin- Note: Supplementary data for this article are available at Molecular Cancer ically relevant MNK inhibitors are available and none have been Research Online (http://mcr.aacrjournals.org/). shown to disrupt the growth of glioblastoma multiforme tumors Corresponding Author: Leonidas C. Platanias, The Robert H. Lurie Comprehen- in intracranial mouse models of the disease (10). sive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, 303 East Superior Street, Lurie- Merestinib (LY2801653) is a novel multikinase inhibitor, with 3125, Chicago, IL 60611-3008. Phone: 312-503-4267; Fax: 312-908-1372; Email: potent in vitro activity against MNKs, MET, and other protein [email protected] kinases (18–21). The compound has shown significant antitumor doi: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-16-0172 activity in several xenograft mouse models of non–small cell lung Ó2016 American Association for Cancer Research. cancer and other solid tumors, including one subcutaneous 984 Mol Cancer Res; 14(10) October 2016 Downloaded from mcr.aacrjournals.org on September 29, 2021. © 2016 American Association for Cancer Research. Published OnlineFirst June 30, 2016; DOI: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-16-0172 MNK Inhibition in Glioma Stem Cells xenograft model of glioblastoma multiforme (20). In this study, developed with WesternBright ECL HRP substrate (Advansta) we sought to investigate MNKs as potential targets in GSCs. Our and autoradiography film (Denville Scientific). study suggests an important role for the MNK inhibitor, meres- tinib, as it inhibits MNK signaling in glioblastoma multiforme Polysomal fractionation and RT-PCR cells and GSCs, blocks growth of GSCs as neurospheres, and For polysomal fractionation, cell lysates were separated with a improves overall survival in an intracranial xenograft mouse 10% to 50% sucrose gradient as described previously (23). Poly- fi fi model. These ndings suggest a mesenchymal-speci c role for somal fractions were pooled and RNA was purified using the MNKs in glioblastoma multiforme and highlight a particular AllPrep RNA/Protein Kit (Qiagen). Specific primers for CCND1, vulnerability of mesenchymal GSCs for pharmacologic MNK CCND2, BCL2, and GAPDH (Thermo Fisher) were used for qRT- inhibition. PCR. GAPDH was used for normalization. Our results show that merestinib blocks phosphorylation of eIF4E in established glioblastoma multiforme cell lines and patient-derived GSCs. Analysis of data from The Cancer Genome Preprocessing of TCGA glioblastoma multiforme exon-array Atlas (TCGA) reveals that the MKNK1 and MKNK2 genes are data and subtyping overexpressed in glioblastoma multiforme from the mesenchy- The unprocessed Affymetrix exon-array datasets for 419 glio- mal subtype. Furthermore, in glioblastoma multiforme, MKNK1 blastoma multiforme samples were downloaded from the TCGA expression correlates with CD44, a mesenchymal GSC marker. data portal (https://tcga-data.nci.nih.gov/tcga). We followed the Using patient-derived mesenchymal GSCs, we found that mer- data preprocessing procedure described in our recent study (24). estinib disrupts cancer stem cell viability and frequency, as deter- Samples underwent subtyping into one of four molecular classes mined by neurosphere formation and extreme limiting dilution of glioblastoma multiforme (classical, mesenchymal, proneural, analysis (ELDA). Finally, in an intracranial xenograft mouse or neural), as described previously (25). We used an isoform- model of glioblastoma multiforme, merestinib inhibited MNK based classifier to obtain the patient subtype information (24). signaling and improved overall survival. Unpaired t tests were used to determine whether MKNK1, MKNK2,orMET were differentially expressed between different glioblastoma multiforme subtypes. Materials and Methods Cell culture and reagents Analysis of TCGA glioblastoma multiforme and LGG RNA-seq Glioblastoma multiforme cell lines were grown in DMEM data supplemented with FBS (10%) and gentamycin (0.1 mg/mL). RNASeqV2 level 3–released gene level expression data for RNA U87 cells were authenticated by short tandem repeat (STR) sequencing (RNA-seq) were downloaded for glioblastoma multi- analysis in January 2016 (Genetica DNA Laboratories). The forme and low-grade gliomas (LGG) from TCGA. The data pro- isolation of patient-derived glioma stem cells and generation cessing and quality control were done by the Broad Institute's of GSC lines (83Mes, MD30, and GBM43) has been described TCGA workgroup. The reference gene transcript set was based on previously (8, 22). GSCs were cultured in DMEM/F12 supple- the HG19 UCSC gene standard track. MapSplice (26) was used to mented with EGF (20 ng/mL), bFGF (20 ng/mL), heparin (5 perform the alignment and RSEM (27) to perform the quantita- mg/mL), B27 (2%), and gentamycin (0.1 mg/mL). Merestinib tion. Unpaired t tests were used to determine whether MKNK1 was was provided by Eli Lilly & Company and dissolved in DMSO differentially expressed between LGG and glioblastoma multi- for in vitro studies. For in vivo studies, merestinib was first forme. The upper quartile normalized RSEM count estimates were dissolved in PEG400, followed by sonication