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Chantzi E, Hammerling U, Gustafsson MG. Exhaustive in vitro evaluation of the 9-drug cocktail CUSP9 for treatment of glioblastoma. Comput Biol Med 2024; 178:108748. [PMID: 38925084 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2024.108748] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2023] [Revised: 05/23/2024] [Accepted: 06/08/2024] [Indexed: 06/28/2024]
Abstract
The CUSP9 protocol is a polypharmaceutical strategy aiming at addressing the complexity of glioblastoma by targeting multiple pathways. Although the rationale for this 9-drug cocktail is well-supported by theoretical and in vitro data, its effectiveness compared to its 511 possible subsets has not been comprehensively evaluated. Such an analysis could reveal if fewer drugs could achieve similar or better outcomes. We conducted an exhaustive in vitro evaluation of the CUSP9 protocol using COMBImageDL, our specialized framework for testing higher-order drug combinations. This study assessed all 511 subsets of the CUSP9v3 protocol, in combination with temozolomide, on two clonal cultures of glioma-initiating cells derived from patient samples. The drugs were used at fixed, clinically relevant concentrations, and the experiment was performed in quadruplicate with endpoint cell viability and live-cell imaging readouts. Our results showed that several lower-order drug combinations produced effects equivalent to the full CUSP9 cocktail, indicating potential for simplified regimens in personalized therapy. Further validation through in vivo and precision medicine testing is required. Notably, a subset of four drugs (auranofin, disulfiram, itraconazole, sertraline) was particularly effective, reducing cell growth, altering cell morphology, increasing apoptotic-like cells within 4-28 h, and significantly decreasing cell viability after 68 h compared to untreated cells. This study underscores the importance and feasibility of comprehensive in vitro evaluations of complex drug combinations on patient-derived tumor cells, serving as a critical step toward (pre-)clinical development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Efthymia Chantzi
- Department of Medical Sciences, Cancer Pharmacology and Computational Medicine, Uppsala University, Sweden.
| | - Ulf Hammerling
- Department of Civil & Industrial Engineering, Industrial Analytics, Uppsala University, Sweden
| | - Mats G Gustafsson
- Department of Civil & Industrial Engineering, Industrial Analytics, Uppsala University, Sweden.
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Ramos S, Vicente-Blázquez A, López-Rubio M, Gallego-Yerga L, Álvarez R, Peláez R. Frentizole, a Nontoxic Immunosuppressive Drug, and Its Analogs Display Antitumor Activity via Tubulin Inhibition. Int J Mol Sci 2023; 24:17474. [PMID: 38139302 PMCID: PMC10744269 DOI: 10.3390/ijms242417474] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2023] [Revised: 12/04/2023] [Accepted: 12/09/2023] [Indexed: 12/24/2023] Open
Abstract
Antimitotic agents are one of the more successful types of anticancer drugs, but they suffer from toxicity and resistance. The application of approved drugs to new indications (i.e., drug repurposing) is a promising strategy for the development of new drugs. It relies on finding pattern similarities: drug effects to other drugs or conditions, similar toxicities, or structural similarity. Here, we recursively searched a database of approved drugs for structural similarity to several antimitotic agents binding to a specific site of tubulin, with the expectation of finding structures that could fit in it. These searches repeatedly retrieved frentizole, an approved nontoxic anti-inflammatory drug, thus indicating that it might behave as an antimitotic drug devoid of the undesired toxic effects. We also show that the usual repurposing approach to searching for targets of frentizole failed in most cases to find such a relationship. We synthesized frentizole and a series of analogs to assay them as antimitotic agents and found antiproliferative activity against HeLa tumor cells, inhibition of microtubule formation within cells, and arrest at the G2/M phases of the cell cycle, phenotypes that agree with binding to tubulin as the mechanism of action. The docking studies suggest binding at the colchicine site in different modes. These results support the repurposing of frentizole for cancer treatment, especially for glioblastoma.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sergio Ramos
- Laboratorio de Química Orgánica y Farmacéutica, Departamento de Ciencias Farmacéuticas, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain; (S.R.); (M.L.-R.); (L.G.-Y.); (R.Á.)
- Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Salamanca (IBSAL), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
- Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Tropicales de la Universidad de Salamanca (CIETUS), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
| | - Alba Vicente-Blázquez
- Laboratorio de Química Orgánica y Farmacéutica, Departamento de Ciencias Farmacéuticas, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain; (S.R.); (M.L.-R.); (L.G.-Y.); (R.Á.)
- Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Salamanca (IBSAL), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
- Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Tropicales de la Universidad de Salamanca (CIETUS), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
| | - Marta López-Rubio
- Laboratorio de Química Orgánica y Farmacéutica, Departamento de Ciencias Farmacéuticas, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain; (S.R.); (M.L.-R.); (L.G.-Y.); (R.Á.)
- Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Salamanca (IBSAL), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
- Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Tropicales de la Universidad de Salamanca (CIETUS), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
| | - Laura Gallego-Yerga
- Laboratorio de Química Orgánica y Farmacéutica, Departamento de Ciencias Farmacéuticas, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain; (S.R.); (M.L.-R.); (L.G.-Y.); (R.Á.)
- Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Salamanca (IBSAL), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
- Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Tropicales de la Universidad de Salamanca (CIETUS), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
| | - Raquel Álvarez
- Laboratorio de Química Orgánica y Farmacéutica, Departamento de Ciencias Farmacéuticas, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain; (S.R.); (M.L.-R.); (L.G.-Y.); (R.Á.)
- Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Salamanca (IBSAL), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
- Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Tropicales de la Universidad de Salamanca (CIETUS), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
| | - Rafael Peláez
- Laboratorio de Química Orgánica y Farmacéutica, Departamento de Ciencias Farmacéuticas, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain; (S.R.); (M.L.-R.); (L.G.-Y.); (R.Á.)
- Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Salamanca (IBSAL), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
- Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Tropicales de la Universidad de Salamanca (CIETUS), Facultad de Farmacia, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
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Athanasiadis P, Ravikumar B, Elliott RJ, Dawson JC, Carragher NO, Clemons PA, Johanssen T, Ebner D, Aittokallio T. Chemogenomic library design strategies for precision oncology, applied to phenotypic profiling of glioblastoma patient cells. iScience 2023; 26:107209. [PMID: 37485377 PMCID: PMC10359939 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107209] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/29/2023] [Revised: 02/21/2023] [Accepted: 06/21/2023] [Indexed: 07/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Designing a targeted screening library of bioactive small molecules is a challenging task since most compounds modulate their effects through multiple protein targets with varying degrees of potency and selectivity. We implemented analytic procedures for designing anticancer compound libraries adjusted for library size, cellular activity, chemical diversity and availability, and target selectivity. The resulting compound collections cover a wide range of protein targets and biological pathways implicated in various cancers, making them widely applicable to precision oncology. We characterized the compound and target spaces of the virtual libraries, in comparison with a minimal screening library of 1,211 compounds for targeting 1,386 anticancer proteins. In a pilot screening study, we identified patient-specific vulnerabilities by imaging glioma stem cells from patients with glioblastoma (GBM), using a physical library of 789 compounds that cover 1,320 of the anticancer targets. The cell survival profiling revealed highly heterogeneous phenotypic responses across the patients and GBM subtypes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Paschalis Athanasiadis
- Institute for Cancer Research, Department of Cancer Genetics, Oslo University Hospital, 0310 Oslo, Norway
- Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology (OCBE), Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, 0317 Oslo, Norway
| | - Balaguru Ravikumar
- Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), HiLIFE, University of Helsinki, 20520 00290 Helsinki, Finland
| | - Richard J.R. Elliott
- Cancer Research UK Scotland Centre, Institute of Genetics and Cancer, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH4 2XR, UK
| | - John C. Dawson
- Cancer Research UK Scotland Centre, Institute of Genetics and Cancer, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH4 2XR, UK
| | - Neil O. Carragher
- Cancer Research UK Scotland Centre, Institute of Genetics and Cancer, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH4 2XR, UK
| | - Paul A. Clemons
- Chemical Biology and Therapeutics Science Program, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, 415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, United States
| | - Timothy Johanssen
- Target Discovery Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7FZ, UK
| | - Daniel Ebner
- Target Discovery Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7FZ, UK
| | - Tero Aittokallio
- Institute for Cancer Research, Department of Cancer Genetics, Oslo University Hospital, 0310 Oslo, Norway
- Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology (OCBE), Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, 0317 Oslo, Norway
- Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), HiLIFE, University of Helsinki, 20520 00290 Helsinki, Finland
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