posted on 2023-04-04, 11:45authored byOssia M. Eichhoff, Corinne I. Stoffel, Jan Käsler, Luzia Briker, Patrick Turko, Gergely Karsai, Nina Zila, Verena Paulitschke, Phil F. Cheng, Alexander Leitner, Andrea Bileck, Nicola Zamboni, Anja Irmisch, Zsolt Balazs, Aizhan Tastanova, Susana Pascoal, Pål Johansen, Rebekka Wegmann, Julien Mena, Alaa Othman, Vasanthi S. Viswanathan, Judith Wenzina, Andrea Aloia, Annalisa Saltari, Andreas Dzung, Michael Krauthammer, Stuart L. Schreiber, Thorsten Hornemann, Martin Distel, Berend Snijder, Reinhard Dummer, Mitchell P. Levesque
Table ST1: Summary of growth inhibitory IC50 values (including the corresponding 95% confident intervals (C.I.95%) conducted for neocuproine or MEKi (binimetinib) and primary human cell lines. The table includes the confirmed oncogenic mutation as well as the ratio of neocuproine normalized to the MEKi response.
Funding
Swiss National Foundation
History
ARTICLE ABSTRACT
Clinical management of melanomas with NRAS mutations is challenging. Targeting MAPK signaling is only beneficial to a small subset of patients due to resistance that arises through genetic, transcriptional, and metabolic adaptation. Identification of targetable vulnerabilities in NRAS-mutated melanoma could help improve patient treatment. Here, we used multiomics analyses to reveal that NRAS-mutated melanoma cells adopt a mesenchymal phenotype with a quiescent metabolic program to resist cellular stress induced by MEK inhibition. The metabolic alterations elevated baseline reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, leading these cells to become highly sensitive to ROS induction. In vivo xenograft experiments and single-cell RNA sequencing demonstrated that intratumor heterogeneity necessitates the combination of a ROS inducer and a MEK inhibitor to inhibit both tumor growth and metastasis. Ex vivo pharmacoscopy of 62 human metastatic melanomas confirmed that MEK inhibitor–resistant tumors significantly benefited from the combination therapy. Finally, oxidative stress response and translational suppression corresponded with ROS-inducer sensitivity in 486 cancer cell lines, independent of cancer type. These findings link transcriptional plasticity to a metabolic phenotype that can be inhibited by ROS inducers in melanoma and other cancers.
Metabolic reprogramming in drug-resistant NRAS-mutated melanoma cells confers sensitivity to ROS induction, which suppresses tumor growth and metastasis in combination with MAPK pathway inhibitors.