Cambridge team discovers novel pathway involved in therapy-resistant
cancers
8 January 2009
Scientists at The Babraham Institute at Cambridge University have
identified a novel target that may help to combat the growing problem of
therapy-resistant cancers and pave the way for innovative therapeutic
approaches.
Their discovery, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine,
centres on the significance of DNA damage for both normal cells and
cancer cells. It reveals that a biochemical signalling pathway, that
normally ensures damaged cells are diverted towards cellular suicide, is
blocked in certain cancers, rendering them resistant to certain types of
treatment.
DNA damage is a common event in a cell’s life, a consequence of
incorrect copying of the DNA during cell division or provoked by
elements in our environment like tobacco smoke and sunlight. However, if
DNA damage occurs, the cell normally triggers a repair response and if
the damage is not repaired, the cell is targeted for cell death, a
process known as apoptosis. In this way the body protects itself from
cells that might become cancerous. The cells that do become cancerous
manage to by-pass these repair and self-destruction pathways, promoting
the survival of damaged cells.
The research is a collaboration between the BBSRC-funded Babraham
Institute, the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s Hospital,
Cambridge, using cells from patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia
(CML), and polycythemia vera (PV), two myeloproliferative disorders.
Cancers, such as the leukaemias investigated in this work, are
characterised by an accumulation of DNA damage. DNA damage triggers
several pathways to ensure that cells die by apoptosis. The authors
describe a key new pathway involved in this process, and its subversion
in cancer cells.
The team have found that DNA damage in normal cells increases the
activity of a proton pump located in the cell membrane, known as NHE-1,
which raises the pH of the cell. This has a critical effect on a protein
called Bcl-xL, known as a survival protein because of its ability to
suppress cell death.
However, in the more alkaline environment (higher pH) a chemical
process called deamidation converts Bcl-xL into a form that allows cells
with damaged DNA to die. The authors have discovered that this pathway
is inhibited in (cancerous) myeloid cells, keeping them alive to proceed
with their deadly mission. This is the first demonstration of a role for
deamidation in human malignancy.
Both the leukaemias studied by the authors are caused by oncogenic
tyrosine kinases. These are enzymes — chemical catalysts — that trigger
cancer when their activity is abnormally high. These kinases not only
cause cells to become cancerous in the first place, but also make the
cells resistant to chemotherapy and radiotherapy once they have turned
into cancer cells.
The authors have discovered that it is these kinases that block the
key Bcl-xL deamidation pathway that normally allows DNA damaged cells to
die. The activated tyrosine kinase causing CML is called BCR-ABL,
whereas in PV the culprit is JAK-2. Altogether more than 30 aberrant
tyrosine kinases are known to cause human cancers.
“This discovery provides new insights into how oncogenes, the genes
that cause cancer, allow cells to accumulate more and more damage to
their DNA without dying”, explains Dr Denis Alexander. “This new
understanding of how oncogenes work also opens up some interesting ideas
for future cancer therapies".
Cancer therapies depend to a large degree on the DNA damage caused by
chemotherapy or radiotherapy, causing cancer cells to die. However, in
cancers caused by tyrosine kinases the cells are often resistant to such
therapies, referred to as ‘genotoxic resistance’. Fortunately inhibitors
of the oncogenic kinases are now being increasingly used in the clinic
but the kinases sometimes mutate so that this therapy no longer works.
The therapeutic interest in this research comes from the authors’
finding that simply switching back on the Bcl-xL deamidation pathway
causes the cancer cells to die. This can be engineered in living cells
by increasing the pH inside the cells artificially, which causes the
Bcl-xL to deamidate so that the cells undergo apoptosis.
This therapeutic ‘proof-of-principle’ was dramatically illustrated by
studying a CML patient’s cells which had become resistant to Imatinib,
the BCR-ABL inhibitor now widely used in the clinic. As expected,
Imatinib was unable to restore the Bcl-xL deamidation pathway in the
patient’s cells. But the resistance could be bypassed by artificially
(genetically) increasing the level of NHE-1 in the drug-resistant CML
cells when studied in the laboratory, so increasing cancer cell death.
So drug resistance can be overcome by activating the NHE-1 pathway,
thereby increasing the pH inside the cell, and in turn Bcl-xL
deamidation and apoptosis.
The discovery that modulating the NHE-1/Bcl-xL signalling pathway can
override resistance to controlled cell death (apoptosis) in cancers like
CML and PV, paves the way for new therapeutic approaches that could be
of immense importance in cancers where Bcl-xL plays a pivotal role in
genotoxic resistance.
This research was supported by the Association for International
Cancer Research, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research
Council (BBSRC), the UK Leukaemia Research Fund, the Wellcome Trust, the
UK Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, and the US Leukemia and
Lymphoma Society.
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