Hypoxia inducible factor down-regulation, cancer and cancer stem cells (CSCs): ongoing success stories

HBOC alleviated tumour hypoxia during radiotherapy more intensely in large solid tumours than regular ones

Radiotherapy (RT) is a highly valuable method in cancer therapy, but its therapeutic efficacy is limited by its side effects and tumour radiation resistance. The resistance is mainly induced by hypoxia in the tumour microenvironment (TME). As a nano-oxygen carrier, Haemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) administration is a promising strategy to alleviate tumour hypoxia which may remodel TME to ameliorate radiation resistance and enable RT more effective. In this study, we administered fractionated RT combined with HBOC to treat Miapaca-2 cell and Hela cell xenografts on nude mice. The study found that HBOC relieved hypoxic environment and down-regulate expression of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (Hif-1α) both in regular (100 mm3) and large (360/400 mm3) tumours. The proliferation and metastasis of tumour tissue also decreased after HBOC application. Nevertheless, in vivo RT combined with HBOC performed more effectively to suppress tumour growth in large tumours than in regular tumours. This is due to more severe hypoxic regions exist in the large solid tumours compared to the regular counterparts, and HBOC administration may be more effective in alleviating hypoxia in large tumours. Thus, HBOC sensitization therapy is more suitable for large solid tumours.

Inside the stemness engine: Mechanistic links between deregulated transcription factors and stemness in cancer

Cell identity is largely determined by its transcriptional profile. In tumour, deregulation of transcription factor expression and/or activity enables cancer cell to acquire a stem-like state characterised by capacity to self-renew, differentiate and form tumours in vivo. These stem-like cancer cells are highly metastatic and therapy resistant, thus warranting a more complete understanding of the molecular mechanisms downstream of the transcription factors that mediate the establishment of stemness state. Here, we review recent research findings that provide a mechanistic link between the commonly deregulated transcription factors and stemness in cancer. In particular, we describe the role of master transcription factors (SOX, OCT4, NANOG, KLF, BRACHYURY, SALL, HOX, FOX and RUNX), signalling-regulated transcription factors (SMAD, β-catenin, YAP, TAZ, AP-1, NOTCH, STAT, GLI, ETS and NF-κB) and unclassified transcription factors (c-MYC, HIF, EMT transcription factors and P53) across diverse tumour types, thereby yielding a comprehensive overview identifying shared downstream targets, highlighting unique mechanisms and discussing complexities.

Hypoxia signaling: Challenges and opportunities for cancer therapy

Hypoxia is arguably the first recognized cancer microenvironment hallmark and affects virtually all cellular populations present in tumors. During the past decades the complex adaptive cellular responses to oxygen deprivation have been largely elucidated, raising hope for new anti cancer agents. Despite undeniable preclinical progress, therapeutic targeting of tumor hypoxia is yet to transition from bench to bedside. This review focuses on new pharmacological agents that exploit tumor hypoxia or interfere with hypoxia signaling and discusses strategies to maximize their therapeutic impact.

Targeting HIF-1α by Natural and Synthetic Compounds: A Promising Approach for Anti-Cancer Therapeutics Development

Advancement in novel target detection using improved molecular cancer biology has opened up new avenues for promising anti-cancer drug development. In the past two decades, the mechanism of tumor hypoxia has become more understandable with the discovery of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α). It is a major transcriptional regulator that coordinates the activity of various transcription factors and their downstream molecules involved in tumorigenesis. HIF-1α not only plays a crucial role in the adaptation of tumor cells to hypoxia but also regulates different biological processes, including cell proliferation, survival, cellular metabolism, angiogenesis, metastasis, cancer stem cell maintenance, and propagation. Therefore, HIF-1α overexpression is strongly associated with poor prognosis in patients with different solid cancers. Hence, pharmacological targeting of HIF-1α has been considered to be a novel cancer therapeutic strategy in recent years. In this review, we provide brief descriptions of natural and synthetic compounds as HIF-1α inhibitors that have the potential to accelerate anticancer drug discovery. This review also introduces the mode of action of these compounds for a better understanding of the chemical leads, which could be useful as cancer therapeutics in the future.

Understanding p300-transcription factor interactions using sequence variation and hybridization

The hypoxic response is central to cell function and plays a significant role in the growth and survival of solid tumours. HIF-1 regulates the hypoxic response by activating over 100...

Preconditioning of Hypoxic Culture Increases The Therapeutic Potential of Adipose Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Various in vitro preconditioning strategies have been implemented to increase the regenerative capacity of MSCs. Among them are modulation of culture atmosphere (hypoxia or anoxia), three-dimensional culture (3D), addition of trophic factors (in the form of growth factors, cytokines or hormones), lipopolysaccharides, and pharmacological agents. Preconditioning mesenchymal stem cells by culturing them in a hypoxic environment, which resembles the natural oxygen environment of the tissues (1% –7%) and not with standard culture conditions (21%), increases the survival of these cells via Hypoxia Inducible Factor-1α (HIF-1a) and via Akt-dependent mechanisms. In addition, the hypoxic precondition stimulates the secretion of pro-angiogenic growth factors, increases the expression of chemokines SDF-1 (stromal cell-derived factor-1) and its receptor CXCR4 (chemokine receptor type 4) - CXCR7 (chemokine receptor type 7) and increases engraftment of stem cell. This review aims to provide an overview of the preconditioned hypoxic treatment to increase the therapeutic potential of adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells.  

Biguanides drugs: Past success stories and promising future for drug discovery

Biguanides have attracted much attention a century ago and showed resurgent interest in recent years after a long period of dormancy. They constitute an important class of therapeutic agents suitable for the treatment of a wide spectrum of diseases. Therapeutic indications of biguanides include antidiabetic, antimalarial, antiviral, antiplaque, and bactericidal applications. This review presents an extensive overview of the biological activity of biguanides and different mechanisms of action of currently marketed biguanide-containing drugs, as well as their pharmacological properties when applicable. We highlight the recent developments in research on biguanide compounds, with a primary focus on studies on metformin in the field of oncology. We aim to provide a critical overview of all main bioactive biguanide compounds and discuss future perspectives for the design of new drugs based on the biguanide fragment.

Peptide-based inhibitors of protein-protein interactions: biophysical, structural and cellular consequences of introducing a constraint

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are implicated in the majority of cellular processes by enabling and regulating the function of individual proteins. Thus, PPIs represent high-value, but challenging targets for therapeutic intervention. The development of constrained peptides represents an emerging strategy to generate peptide-based PPI inhibitors, typically mediated by α-helices. The approach can confer significant benefits including enhanced affinity, stability and cellular penetration and is ingrained in the premise that pre-organization simultaneously pays the entropic cost of binding, prevents a peptide from adopting a protease compliant β-strand conformation and shields the hydrophilic amides from the hydrophobic membrane. This conceptual blueprint for the empirical design of peptide-based PPI inhibitors is an exciting and potentially lucrative way to effect successful PPI inhibitor drug-discovery. However, a plethora of more subtle effects may arise from the introduction of a constraint that include changes to binding dynamics, the mode of recognition and molecular properties. In this review, we summarise the influence of inserting constraints on biophysical, conformational, structural and cellular behaviour across a range of constraining chemistries and targets, to highlight the tremendous success that has been achieved with constrained peptides alongside emerging design opportunities and challenges.

Design and synthesis of 14 and 15-membered macrocyclic scaffolds exhibiting inhibitory activities of hypoxia-inducible factor 1α

Inspired by the privileged molecular skeletons of 14- and 15-membered antibiotics, we adopted a relatively unexplored synthetic approach that exploits alkaloidal macrocyclic scaffolds to generate modulators of protein-protein interactions (PPIs). As mimetics of hot-spot residues in the α-helices responsible for the transcriptional regulation, three hydrophobic sidechains were displayed on each of the four distinct macrocyclic scaffolds generating diversity of their spatial arrangements. Modular assembly of the building blocks followed by ring-closing olefin metathesis reaction and subsequent hydrogenation allowed concise and divergent synthesis of scaffolds 1-4. The 14-membered alkaloidal macrocycles 2-4 demonstrated similar inhibition of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α transcriptional activities (IC₅₀ between 8.7 and 10 µM), and 4 demonstrated the most potent inhibition of cell proliferation in vitro (IC₅₀ = 12 µM against HTC116 colon cancer cell line). A docking model suggested that 4 could mimic the LLxxL motif in HIF-1α, in which the three sidechains are capable of matching the spatial arrangements of the protein hot-spot residues. Unlike most of the stapled peptides, the 14-membered alkaloidal scaffold has a similar size to the α-helix backbone and does not require additional atoms to induce α-helix mimetic structure. These experimental results underscore the potential of alkaloidal macrocyclic scaffolds featuring flexibly customizable skeletal, stereochemical, substitutional, and conformational properties for the development of non-peptidyl PPI modulators targeting α-helix-forming consensus sequences responsible for the transcriptional regulation.

Promising Applications of Tumor Spheroids and Organoids for Personalized Medicine

One of the promising directions in personalized medicine is the use of three-dimensional (3D) tumor models such as spheroids and organoids. Spheroids and organoids are three-dimensional cultures of tumor cells that can be obtained from patient tissue and, using high-throughput personalized medicine methods, provide a suitable therapy for that patient. These 3D models can be obtained from most types of tumors, which provides opportunities for the creation of biobanks with appropriate patient materials that can be used to screen drugs and facilitate the development of therapeutic agents. It should be noted that the use of spheroids and organoids would expand the understanding of tumor biology and its microenvironment, help develop new in vitro platforms for drug testing and create new therapeutic strategies. In this review, we discuss 3D tumor spheroid and organoid models, their advantages and disadvantages, and evaluate their promising use in personalized medicine.

Stapled Peptides as HIF-1α/p300 Inhibitors: Helicity Enhancement in the Bound State Increases Inhibitory Potency

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) control virtually all cellular processes and have thus emerged as potential targets for development of molecular therapeutics. Peptide-based inhibitors of PPIs are attractive given that they offer recognition potency and selectivity features that are ideal for function, yet, they do not predominantly populate the bioactive conformation, frequently suffer from poor cellular uptake and are easily degraded, for example, by proteases. The constraint of peptides in a bioactive conformation has emerged as a promising strategy to mitigate against these liabilities. In this work, using peptides derived from hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1α) together with dibromomaleimide stapling, we identify constrained peptide inhibitors of the HIF-1α/p300 interaction that are more potent than their unconstrained sequences. Contrary to expectation, the increased potency does not correlate with an increased population of an α-helical conformation in the unbound state as demonstrated by experimental circular dichroism analysis. Rather, the ability of the peptide to adopt a bioactive α-helical conformation in the p300 bound state is better supported in the constrained variant as demonstrated by molecular dynamics simulations and circular dichroism difference spectra.

Metastatic propagation of thyroid cancer; organ tropism and major modulators

Thyroid cancer, as the most prevalent endocrine malignancy, comprises nearly 1% of all cancers in the world. The metastatic propagation of thyroid cancer is under the control of a number of modulating processes and factors such as signaling pathways and their components, cell division regulators, metabolic reprogramming factors, extracellular matrix remodelers, epithelial to mesenchymal transition modulators, epigenetic mechanisms, hypoxia and cytokines. Identifying the exact molecular mechanisms of these dysregulated processes could help to discover the key targets for therapeutic purposes and utilizing them as diagnostic, prognostic and predictors of the clinical course of patients. In this review article, we describe different aspects of thyroid cancer metastasis by focusing on defective genes and pathways involved in its metastatic spread.

Cancer stem cells and nanotechnological approaches for eradication

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are currently known as the main cause of tumor recurrence. After chemotherapy is completed, CSCs proliferate and then differentiate to generate new tumor tissues. Similar to normal stem cells, this non-uniformly distributed cell population in the tumor tissue has self-renewal capacity and is responsible for survival of the tumor and difference in its genetic and metabolic characteristics. Followed by gene instability in CSCs, new phenotypic markers are aberrantly expressed in CSCs subpopulation. Hence, some of the surface markers and metabolic pathways that are upregulated in CSCs may be applied as specific targets for development of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. In this review article, the distinctive properties of CSCs including signal pathways implicated in self-renewal and surface markers were discussed. Moreover, targeting CSCs based on their specific properties using nanodrugs was reviewed.

Synthesis, 3D-structure and stability analyses of NRPa-308, a new promising anti-cancer agent

We report herein the synthesis of a newly described anti-cancer agent, NRPa-308. This compound antagonizes Neuropilin-1, a multi-partners transmembrane receptor overexpressed in numerous tumors, and thereby validated as promising target in oncology. The preparation of NRPa-308 proved challenging because of the orthogonality of the amide and sulphonamide bonds formation. Nevertheless, we succeeded a gram scale synthesis, according to an expeditious three steps route, without intermediate purification. This latter point is of utmost interest in reducing the ecologic impact and production costs in the perspective of further scale-up processes. The purity of NRPa-308 has been attested by means of conventional structural analyses and its crystallisation allowed a structural assessment by X-Ray diffraction. We also reported the remarkable chemical stability of this molecule in acidic, neutral and basic aqueous media. Eventually, we observed for the first time the accumulation of NRPa-308 in two types of human breast cancer cells MDA-MB231 and BT549.

Modular synthesis of new C-aryl-nucleosides and their anti-CML activity

The C-aryl-ribosyles are of utmost interest for the development of antiviral and anticancer agents. Even if several synthetic pathways have been disclosed for the preparation of these nucleosides, a direct, few steps and modular approaches are still lacking. In line with our previous efforts, we report herein a one step - eco-friendly β-ribosylation of aryles and heteroaryles through a direct Friedel-Craft ribosylation mediated by bismuth triflate, Bi(OTf)₃. The resulting carbohydrates have been functionalized by cross-coupling reactions, leading to a series of new C-aryl-nucleosides (32 compounds). Among them, we observed that 5d exerts promising anti-proliferative effects against two human Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) cell lines, both sensitive (K562-S) or resistant (K562-R) to imatinib, the "gold standard of care" used in this pathology. Moreover, we demonstrated that 5d kills CML cells by a non-conventional mechanism of cell death.

Structure activity relationship and optimization of N-(3-(2-aminothiazol-4-yl)aryl)benzenesulfonamides as anti-cancer compounds against sensitive and resistant cells

We recently described a new family of bioactive molecules with interesting anti-cancer activities: the N-(4-(3-aminophenyl)thiazol-2-yl)acetamides. The lead compound of the series (1) displays significant anti-proliferative and cytotoxic activities against a panel of cancer cell lines, either sensitive or resistant to standard treatments. This molecule also shows a good pharmacological profile and high in vivo potency towards mice xenografts, without signs of toxicity on the animals. In the present article, we disclose the structure-activity relationships of this lead compound, which have provided clear information about the replacement of the acetamide function and the substitution pattern of the benzenesulfonamide ring. An improved high-yielding synthetic procedure towards these compounds has also been developed. Our drug design resulted in potency enhancement of 1, our new optimized lead compound being 19. These findings are of great interest to further improve this scaffold for the development of future clinical candidates.

Hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) as a model for studying inhibition of protein-protein interactions

The state of the art in identifying protein–protein interaction inhibitors of hypoxia inducible factor – a promising target for anticancer drug design – is described.

The modulation of protein–protein interactions (PPIs) represents a major challenge in modern chemical biology. Current approaches (e.g. high-throughput screening, computer aided ligand design) are recognised as having limitations in terms of identification of hit matter. Considerable success has been achieved in terms of developing new approaches to PPI modulator discovery using the p53/hDM2 and Bcl-2 family of PPIs. However these important targets in oncology might be considered as “low-hanging-fruit”. Hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) is an emerging, but not yet fully validated target for cancer chemotherapy. Its role is to regulate the hypoxic response and it does so through a plethora of protein–protein interactions of varying topology, topography and complexity: its modulation represents an attractive approach to prevent development of new vasculature by hypoxic tumours.