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DeRyckere D, Huelse JM, Earp HS, Graham DK. TAM family kinases as therapeutic targets at the interface of cancer and immunity. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 2023; 20:755-779. [PMID: 37667010 DOI: 10.1038/s41571-023-00813-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/07/2023] [Indexed: 09/06/2023]
Abstract
Novel treatment approaches are needed to overcome innate and acquired mechanisms of resistance to current anticancer therapies in cancer cells and the tumour immune microenvironment. The TAM (TYRO3, AXL and MERTK) family receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are potential therapeutic targets in a wide range of cancers. In cancer cells, TAM RTKs activate signalling pathways that promote cell survival, metastasis and resistance to a variety of chemotherapeutic agents and targeted therapies. TAM RTKs also function in innate immune cells, contributing to various mechanisms that suppress antitumour immunity and promote resistance to immune-checkpoint inhibitors. Therefore, TAM antagonists provide an unprecedented opportunity for both direct and immune-mediated therapeutic activity provided by inhibition of a single target, and are likely to be particularly effective when used in combination with other cancer therapies. To exploit this potential, a variety of agents have been designed to selectively target TAM RTKs, many of which have now entered clinical testing. This Review provides an essential guide to the TAM RTKs for clinicians, including an overview of the rationale for therapeutic targeting of TAM RTKs in cancer cells and the tumour immune microenvironment, a description of the current preclinical and clinical experience with TAM inhibitors, and a perspective on strategies for continued development of TAM-targeted agents for oncology applications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Deborah DeRyckere
- Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, USA
- Department of Paediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Justus M Huelse
- Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, USA
- Department of Paediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - H Shelton Earp
- Department of Medicine, UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
- Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
| | - Douglas K Graham
- Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, USA.
- Department of Paediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA.
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Sriram N, Mukherjee S, Sah MK. Gene expression profiling and protein-protein interaction analysis reveals the dynamic role of MCM7 in Alzheimer's disorder and breast cancer. 3 Biotech 2022; 12:146. [PMID: 35698583 DOI: 10.1007/s13205-022-03207-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2022] [Accepted: 05/14/2022] [Indexed: 11/01/2022] Open
Abstract
The interrelation of cancer and Alzheimer's disorder (AD)-associated molecular mechanisms, reported last decade, paved the path for drug discoveries. In this direction, while chemotherapy is well established for breast cancer (BC), the detection and targeted therapy for AD is not advanced due to a lack of recognized peripheral biomarkers. The present study aimed to find diagnostic and prognostic molecular signature markers common to both BC and AD for possible drug targeting and repurposing. For these disorders, two corresponding microarray datasets (GSE42568, GSE33000) were used for identifying the differentially expressed genes (DEGs), resulting in recognition of CD209 and MCM7 as the two common players. While the CD209 gene was upregulated in both disorders and has been studied vastly, the MCM7 gene showed a strikingly reverse pattern of expression level, downregulated in the case of BC while upregulated in the case of AD. Thus, the MCM7 gene was further analyzed for expression, predictions, and validations of its structure and protein-protein interaction (PPI) for the possible development of new treatment methods for AD. The study concluded with indicative drug repurposing studies to check the effect of existing clinically approved drugs for BC for rectifying the expression levels of the mutated MCM7 gene in AD. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-022-03207-1.
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Affiliation(s)
- Navneeth Sriram
- Department of Biotechnology, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab 144011 India
| | - Sunny Mukherjee
- Department of Biotechnology, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab 144011 India
| | - Mahesh Kumar Sah
- Department of Biotechnology, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab 144011 India
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Pariyar M, Thorne RF, Scott RJ, Avery-Kiejda KA. Verification and Validation of a Four-Gene Panel as a Prognostic Indicator in Triple Negative Breast Cancer. Front Oncol 2022; 12:821334. [PMID: 35387118 PMCID: PMC8977600 DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2022.821334] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/24/2021] [Accepted: 02/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly aggressive subtype with a high rate of metastasis, early distant recurrence and resistance to therapy leading to worse survival than other breast cancer subtypes. There are no well-established biomarkers that can determine women who will do better and those who are likely to have poorer outcomes with TNBC, nor are there targeted therapies. Thus, the identification of prognostic and/or predictive biomarkers will enable tailored therapies based on their likelihood of disease outcomes and may prevent over- and under-diagnosis. Previous studies from our laboratory have identified four genes (ANP32E, DSC2, ANKRD30A and IL6ST/gp130) that are specific to TNBC and were associated with lymph node metastasis (LNmets), the earliest indicator of tumor progression via distal spread. This study aimed to validate these findings using absolute quantitation by digital droplet PCR (ddPCR) and to determine relationships with clinicopathological features and survival. Our analysis confirmed all four genes displayed significant expression differences between TNBC cases and non-TNBC cases. Moreover, low IL6ST expression was significantly associated with grade 3 disease, hormone receptor negativity and earlier age at diagnosis; low ANKRD30A expression was associated with tumor size; and high ANP32E expression was significantly associated with grade and the number of positive lymph nodes. Individually, three of the four genes were associated with relapse-free survival in TNBC and in combination, all four genes were significantly associated with TNBC survival, but not in hormone receptor-positive cases. Collectively our results suggest that the four genes may have utility in TNBC prognostication.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mamta Pariyar
- School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia.,Hunter Medical Research Institute, New Lambton Heights, NSW, Australia
| | - Rick F Thorne
- School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia.,Translational Research Institute, Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Academy of Medical Science, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
| | - Rodney J Scott
- School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia.,Hunter Medical Research Institute, New Lambton Heights, NSW, Australia.,NSW Health Pathology, John Hunter Hospital, New Lambton Heights, NSW, Australia
| | - Kelly A Avery-Kiejda
- School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia.,Hunter Medical Research Institute, New Lambton Heights, NSW, Australia
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Varying outcomes of triple-negative breast cancer in different age groups-prognostic value of clinical features and proliferation. Breast Cancer Res Treat 2022; 196:471-482. [PMID: 36261751 PMCID: PMC9633490 DOI: 10.1007/s10549-022-06767-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2022] [Accepted: 10/06/2022] [Indexed: 01/31/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive disease lacking specific biomarkers to guide treatment decisions. We evaluated the combined prognostic impact of clinical features and novel biomarkers of cell cycle-progression in age-dependent subgroups of TNBC patients. METHODS One hundred forty seven TNBC patients with complete clinical data and up to 18 year follow-up were collected from Turku University Hospital, Finland. Eight biomarkers for cell division were immunohistochemically detected to evaluate their clinical applicability in relation to patient and tumor characteristics. RESULTS Age at diagnosis was the decisive factor predicting disease-specific mortality in TNBC (p = 0.002). The established prognostic features, nodal status and Ki-67, predicted survival only when combined with age. The outcome and prognostic features differed significantly between age groups, middle-aged patients showing the most favorable outcome. Among young patients, only lack of basal differentiation predicted disease outcome, indicating 4.5-fold mortality risk (p = 0.03). Among patients aged > 57, the established prognostic features predicted disease outcome with up to 3.0-fold mortality risk for tumor size ≥ 2 cm (p = 0.001). Concerning cell proliferation, Ki-67 alone was a significant prognosticator among patients aged > 57 years (p = 0.009). Among the studied cell cycle-specific biomarkers, only geminin predicted disease outcome, indicating up to 6.2-fold increased risk of mortality for tumor size < 2 cm (p = 0.03). CONCLUSION Traditional clinical features do not provide optimal prognostic characterization for all TNBC patients. Young age should be considered as an additional adverse prognostic feature in therapeutic considerations. Increased proliferation, as evaluated using Ki-67 or geminin immunohistochemistry, showed potential in detecting survival differences in subgroups of TNBC.
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Li P, Niu Y, Li S, Zu X, Xiao M, Yin L, Feng J, He J, Shen Y. Identification of an AXL kinase inhibitor in triple-negative breast cancer by structure-based virtual screening and bioactivity test. Chem Biol Drug Des 2021; 99:222-232. [PMID: 34679238 DOI: 10.1111/cbdd.13977] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2021] [Revised: 09/27/2021] [Accepted: 10/16/2021] [Indexed: 01/04/2023]
Abstract
Breast cancer is a malignant tumor that occurs in the glandular epithelium of the breast, and more than 15% of the patients are triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Therefore, finding new targets and targeted therapeutic drugs for TNBC is urgent. Overexpression of the AXL is associated with motility and invasiveness of the TNBC cells, which is a potential target for breast cancer therapy. A compound Y041-5921 (IC50 = 6.069 μm for AXL kinase and IC50 = 4.1 μm for MDA-MB-231 cell line) was identified through structure-based virtual screening and bioassay test for the first time. The compound Y041-5921 could significantly inhibit the proliferation and invasion of the TNBC cells and the toxicity of Y041-5921 to normal immortalized breast epithelial cells was far lower than that of commonly used clinical chemotherapy drugs. Besides, it also had well inhibitory effect on the proliferation of many other malignant tumor cell lines (the IC50 value are 10.0 m, 7.1 m, 10.3 m, 11.4 m and 5.8 m for U251 cell, COLO cell, PC-9 cell, CAKI-1 cell and MG63 cell, respectively). The interaction mechanism between Y041-5921 and AXL was studied by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and binding free energy calculation, and the key residues whose energy contribution mainly comes from non-polar solvation interaction (such as Ala565, Lys567, Met598, Leu620, Pro621, Met623, Lys624, Arg676, Asn677 and Met679) were identified. The small molecule inhibitors Y041-5921 targeting AXL reported in this work will lay a foundation and provide a theoretical basis for the development of the TNBC.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pei Li
- The First Affiliated Hospital, Department of Oncology, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China.,Key Laboratory of Oncology and Molecular Pathology of Hunan Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China
| | - Yuzhen Niu
- School of Life Sciences, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, Shandong, China
| | - Shuyan Li
- College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Xuyu Zu
- The First Affiliated Hospital, Department of Oncology, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China.,Key Laboratory of Oncology and Molecular Pathology of Hunan Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China
| | - Maoyu Xiao
- The First Affiliated Hospital, Department of Oncology, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China.,Key Laboratory of Oncology and Molecular Pathology of Hunan Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China
| | - Liyang Yin
- The First Affiliated Hospital, Department of Oncology, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China.,Key Laboratory of Oncology and Molecular Pathology of Hunan Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China
| | - Jianbo Feng
- The First Affiliated Hospital, Department of Oncology, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China.,Key Laboratory of Oncology and Molecular Pathology of Hunan Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China
| | - Jun He
- The Nanhua Affiliated Hospital, Department of Spine Surgery, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China
| | - Yingying Shen
- The First Affiliated Hospital, Department of Oncology, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China.,Key Laboratory of Oncology and Molecular Pathology of Hunan Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, China
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