Search

Supplementary Fig. S1 from Quantitative live imaging of cancer and normal cells treated with Kinesin-5 inhibitors indicates significant differences in phenotypic responses and cell fate

Supplementary Methods from Quantitative live imaging of cancer and normal cells treated with Kinesin-5 inhibitors indicates significant differences in phenotypic responses and cell fate

Supplementary Table S3 from Quantitative live imaging of cancer and normal cells treated with Kinesin-5 inhibitors indicates significant differences in phenotypic responses and cell fate

Kinesin-5 inhibitors (K5I) are promising antimitotic cancer drug candidates. They cause prolonged mitotic arrest and death of cancer cells, but their full range of phenotypic effects in different cell types has been unclear. Using time-lapse microscopy of cancer and normal cell lines, we find that a novel K5I causes several different cancer and noncancer cell types to undergo prolonged arrest in monopolar mitosis. Subsequent events, however, differed greatly between cell types. Normal diploid cells mostly slipped from mitosis and arrested in tetraploid G1, with little cell death. Several cancer cell lines died either during mitotic arrest or following slippage. Contrary to prevailing views, mitotic slippage was not required for death, and the duration of mitotic arrest correlated poorly with the probability of death in most cell lines. We also assayed drug reversibility and long-term responses after transient drug exposure in MCF7 breast cancer cells. Although many cells divided after drug washout during mitosis, this treatment resulted in lower survival compared with washout after spontaneous slippage likely due to chromosome segregation errors in the cells that divided. Our analysis shows that K5Is cause cancer-selective cell killing, provides important kinetic information for understanding clinical responses, and elucidates mechanisms of drug sensitivity versus resistance at the level of phenotype. [Mol Cancer Ther 2008;7(11):3480–9]

Supplementary Fig. from Quantitative live imaging of cancer and normal cells treated with Kinesin-5 inhibitors indicates significant differences in phenotypic responses and cell fate

The regulation of cell physiology largely depends upon intracellular interactions of functionally distinct proteins that act in combination. These interactions, which are often transient in nature, help to define the motion profiles of proteins. Measurement of protein motion within a living cellular environment will enable dissection of key interactions among proteins, however, attempts to measure protein motion are typically limited by the low spatial and temporal resolution of existing experimental platforms. Here, we describe a high-throughput single-molecule imaging platform that measures protein motion in living cells. We demonstrate the application of this platform by studying the dynamics of steroid hormone receptors and explore the pharmacology of compounds that affect estrogen receptor (ER) activity. Using our high-throughput single-molecule tracking (htSMT) platform, we screened 5,067 bioactive molecules, identifying multiple proteins and signaling pathways which perturb ER dynamics. We further deployed htSMT to characterize the impact of known ER modulators on ER protein dynamics, uncovering a correlation between ER dynamics and the ability of ER antagonists to suppress cancer cell growth. SMT provides a novel platform capable of measuring real-time target engagement within the living cellular environment. Our results support the view that this tool will prove uniquely valuable in measuring the dynamic interactions among proteins and will prove powerful for the identification of novel therapeutics.

The development and survival of cancer cells require adaptive mechanisms to stress. Such adaptations can confer intrinsic vulnerabilities, enabling the selective targeting of cancer cells. Through a pooled in vivo short hairpin RNA (shRNA) screen, we identified the adenosine triphosphatase associated with diverse cellular activities (AAA-ATPase) valosin-containing protein (VCP) as a top stress-related vulnerability in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). We established that AML was the most responsive disease to chemical inhibition of VCP across a panel of 16 cancer types. The sensitivity to VCP inhibition of human AML cell lines, primary patient samples, and syngeneic and xenograft mouse models of AML was validated using VCP-directed shRNAs, overexpression of a dominant-negative VCP mutant, and chemical inhibition. By combining mass spectrometry-based analysis of the VCP interactome and phospho-signaling studies, we determined that VCP is important for ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) kinase activation and subsequent DNA repair through homologous recombination in AML. A second-generation VCP inhibitor, CB-5339, was then developed and characterized. Efficacy and safety of CB-5339 were validated in multiple AML models, including syngeneic and patient-derived xenograft murine models. We further demonstrated that combining DNA-damaging agents, such as anthracyclines, with CB-5339 treatment synergizes to impair leukemic growth in an MLL-AF9-driven AML murine model. These studies support the clinical testing of CB-5339 as a single agent or in combination with standard-of-care DNA-damaging chemotherapy for the treatment of AML.

RUVBL1 and RUVBL2 are ATPases associated with diverse cellular activities (AAAs) that form a complex involved in a variety of cellular processes, including chromatin remodeling and regulation of gene expression. RUVBLs have a strong link to oncogenesis, where overexpression is correlated with tumor growth and poor prognosis in several cancer types. CB-6644, an allosteric small-molecule inhibitor of the ATPase activity of the RUVBL1/2 complex, interacts specifically with RUVBL1/2 in cancer cells, leading to cell death. Importantly, drug-acquired-resistant cell clones have amino acid mutations in either RUVBL1 or RUVBL2, suggesting that cell killing is an on-target consequence of RUVBL1/2 engagement. In xenograft models of acute myeloid leukemia and multiple myeloma, CB-6644 significantly reduced tumor growth without obvious toxicity. This work demonstrates the therapeutic potential of targeting RUVBLs in the treatment of cancer and establishes a chemical entity for probing the many facets of RUVBL biology.

Kinesin-5 inhibitors (K5I) are promising antimitotic cancer drug candidates. They cause prolonged mitotic arrest and death of cancer cells, but their full range of phenotypic effects in different cell types has been unclear. Using time-lapse microscopy of cancer and normal cell lines, we find that a novel K5I causes several different cancer and noncancer cell types to undergo prolonged arrest in monopolar mitosis. Subsequent events, however, differed greatly between cell types. Normal diploid cells mostly slipped from mitosis and arrested in tetraploid G1, with little cell death. Several cancer cell lines died either during mitotic arrest or following slippage. Contrary to prevailing views, mitotic slippage was not required for death, and the duration of mitotic arrest correlated poorly with the probability of death in most cell lines. We also assayed drug reversibility and long-term responses after transient drug exposure in MCF7 breast cancer cells. Although many cells divided after drug washout during mitosis, this treatment resulted in lower survival compared with washout after spontaneous slippage likely due to chromosome segregation errors in the cells that divided. Our analysis shows that K5Is cause cancer-selective cell killing, provides important kinetic information for understanding clinical responses, and elucidates mechanisms of drug sensitivity versus resistance at the level of phenotype. [Mol Cancer Ther 2008;7(11):3480–9]

The classical Carnot analysis provides means to calculate, relative to a specified heat supply and relative to specified temperature bounds, a limit on the work that can be obtained in any cyclic process consistent with those specifications. Moreover, the Carnot analysis indicates that the calculated limit is sharp, to the extent that it can be attained by a special process (a Carnot cycle) which cannot itself be realized but which can be approximated arbitrarily closely by actual processes. We indicate how, in the spirit of the Carnot analysis, theoretical limits to the productivity of steady-state reactor−separator systems can be calculated relative to specified commitments of resources and relative to specified constraints. We also indicate a sense in which those limits are sharp, to the extent that they might be attained by certain idealized reactor−separator systems which, like Carnot cycles, cannot be realized in practice but which might be approached by actual processes.

Much attention has been paid recently to bistability and switch-like behavior that might be resident in important biochemical reaction networks. There is, in fact, a great deal of subtlety in the relationship between the structure of a reaction network and its capacity to engender bistability. In common physicochemical settings, large classes of extremely complex networks, taken with mass action kinetics, cannot give rise to bistability no matter what values the rate constants take. On the other hand, bistable behavior can be induced in those same settings by certain very simple and classical mass action mechanisms for enzyme catalysis of a single overall reaction. We present a theorem that distinguishes between those mass action networks that might support bistable behavior and those that cannot. Moreover, we indicate how switch-like behavior results from a well-studied mechanism for the action of human dihydrofolate reductase, an important anti-cancer target.

High-content screening (HCS; fluorescence microscopy with multiple markers followed by automated image analysis) is gaining its popularity in drug discovery due to the rich information it reveals about drug responses. It is particularly useful in studying anti-mitotic drug responses since mitotic arrest provides an activity biomarker. One conventional way to probe mitotic arrest and downstream apoptosis response is to use mitosis- and apoptosis-specific antibodies in cell-based imaging assays. However, weakly attached cells, especially dead cells, are mostly washed out during antibody labeling steps. Here, we report a rapid and convenient one-step cell-imaging assay that accurately measures cell-cycle state and apoptosis in mammalian cells. Our assay uses three fluorescent dyes to stain living cells, involves no wash, and is fixable after live-cell labeling. Compared to the antibody-based method, our assay is quicker, more cost-effective, and gives more accurate dose-response results.

Cancer cells can be drug resistant due to genetic variation at multiple steps in the drug response pathway, including drug efflux pumping, target mutation and blunted apoptotic response. These are not discriminated by conventional cell survival assays. Here, we report a rapid and convenient high content cell-imaging assay that measures multiple physiological changes in cells responding to anti-mitotic small-molecule drugs. Our one-step, no-wash assay uses three dyes to stain living cells and is much more accurate for scoring weakly adherent mitotic and apoptotic cells than conventional antibody-based assays. We profiled responses of 33 cell lines to 8 anti-mitotic drugs at multiple concentrations and time points using this assay, and deposited our data and assay protocols into a public database (http://lincs.hms.harvard.edu/). Our data discriminated between alternative mechanisms that compromise drug sensitivity to Paclitaxel, and revealed an unexpected bell-shaped dose-response curve for BI2536, a highly selective inhibitor of Polo-like kinases. Our approach can be generalized, is scalable and should therefore facilitate identification of molecular biomarkers for mechanisms of drug insensitivity in high-throughput screens and other assays.

Small molecule inhibitors of Kinesin-5 (K5Is) that arrest cells in mitosis with monopolar spindles are promising anti-cancer drug candidates. Clinical trials of K5Is revealed dose-limiting neutropenia, or loss of neutrophils, for which the molecular mechanism is unclear. We investigated the effects of a K5I on HL60 cells, a human promyelocytic leukemia cell line that is often used to model dividing neutrophil progenitors in cell culture. We found K5I treatment caused unusually rapid death of HL60 cells exclusively during mitotic arrest. This mitotic death occurred via the intrinsic apoptosis pathway with molecular events that include cytochrome c leakage into the cytoplasm, caspase activation, and Parp1 cleavage. Bcl-2 overexpression protected from death. We probed mitochondrial physiology to find candidate triggers of cytochrome c release, and observed a decrease of membrane potential (ΔΨm) before mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP). Interestingly, this loss of ΔΨm was not blocked by overexpressing Bcl-2, suggesting it might be a cause of Bax/Bak activation, not a consequence. Taken together, these results show that K5I induces intrinsic apoptosis during mitotic arrest in HL60 with loss of ΔΨm as an upstream event of MOMP.