Regulation of autophagy and chloroquine sensitivity by oncogenic RAS in vitro is context-dependent.

Chloroquine (CQ) is an antimalarial drug and late-stage inhibitor of autophagy currently FDA-approved for use in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. Based primarily on its ability to inhibit autophagy, CQ and its derivative, hydroxychloroquine, are currently being investigated as primary or adjuvant therapy in multiple clinical trials for cancer treatment. Oncogenic RAS has previously been shown to regulate autophagic flux, and cancers with high incidence of RAS mutations, such as pancreatic cancer, have been described in the literature as being particularly susceptible to CQ treatment, leading to the hypothesis that oncogenic RAS makes cancer cells dependent on autophagy. This autophagy "addiction" suggests that the mutation status of RAS in tumors could identify patients who would be more likely to benefit from CQ therapy. Here we show that RAS mutation status itself is unlikely to be beneficial in such a patient selection because oncogenic RAS does not always promote autophagy addiction. Moreover, oncogenic RAS can have opposite effects on both autophagic flux and CQ sensitivity in different cells. Finally, for any given cell type, the positive or negative effect of oncogenic RAS on autophagy does not necessarily predict whether RAS will promote or inhibit CQ-mediated toxicity. Thus, although our results confirm that different tumor cell lines display marked differences in how they respond to autophagy inhibition, these differences can occur irrespective of RAS mutation status and, in different contexts, can either promote or reduce chloroquine sensitivity of tumor cells.

Distinct TRAIL resistance mechanisms can be overcome by proteasome inhibition but not generally by synergizing agents.

One impediment to the use of tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) receptor-targeted agents as antitumor drugs is the evolution of resistance, a common problem in cancer. On the contrary, many different kinds of drugs synergize with TRAIL in TRAIL-sensitive tumor cells, raising the question whether one can overcome resistance with the same drugs producing synergy. This is an important question, because recent clinical trials suggest that combination treatments with cytotoxic drugs and TRAIL receptor-targeted agents do not provide additional benefit compared with cytotoxic agents on their own. Such results might be expected if drug combinations that synergize in sensitive tumor cells but cannot overcome TRAIL resistance are used in patients whose tumors were not selected for retention of TRAIL sensitivity. We tested this idea by creating isogenic tumor cells with acquired TRAIL resistance or defined mechanisms of resistance that occur in human tumors and then comparing them to the TRAIL-sensitive parental cell line. Although diverse classes of anticancer drugs were all able to synergize with TRAIL in sensitive cells, most agents were unable to overcome resistance and there was no relationship between the amount of synergy seen with a particular agent and its ability to overcome acquired resistance. An important exception was proteasome inhibitors, which were, however, able to overcome diverse resistance mechanisms. Our findings suggest that one should select drugs for TRAIL receptor agonist combination therapy based not just on their ability to synergize, but rather on their ability to overcome resistance as well as synergize.

TRAIL receptor signaling regulation of chemosensitivity in vivo but not in vitro.

BACKGROUND: Signaling by Tumor Necrosis Factor-Related Apoptosis Inducing Ligand (TRAIL) and Fas ligand (FasL) has been proposed to contribute to the chemosensitivity of tumor cells treated with various other anti-cancer agents. However, the importance of these effects and whether there are differences in vitro and in vivo is unclear. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: To assess the relative contribution of death receptor pathways to this sensitivity and to determine whether these effects are intrinsic to the tumor cells, we compared the chemosensitivity of isogenic BJAB human lymphoma cells where Fas and TRAIL receptors or just TRAIL receptors were inhibited using mutants of the adaptor protein FADD or by altering the expression of the homeobox transcription factor Six1. Inhibition of TRAIL receptors did not affect in vitro tumor cell killing by various anti-cancer agents indicating that chemosensitivity is not significantly affected by the tumor cell-intrinsic activation of death receptor signaling. However, selective inhibition of TRAIL receptor signaling caused reduced tumor regression and clearance in vivo when tested in a NOD/SCID mouse model. CONCLUSIONS: These data show that TRAIL receptor signaling in tumor cells can determine chemosensitivity in vivo but not in vitro and thus imply that TRAIL resistance makes tumors less susceptible to conventional cytotoxic anti-cancer drugs as well as drugs that directly target the TRAIL receptors.