Upregulation of PIK3IP1 monitors the anti-cancer activity of PI3Kα inhibitors in gastric cancer cells.

Gastric cancer remains one of the most malignant cancers in the world. The target-based drugs approved by FDA for gastric cancer treatment include only three targets and benefit a small portion of gastric cancer patients. PIK3CA, a confirmed oncogene, mutates in 7-25% gastric cancer patients. PI3Kα inhibitor BYL719 has been approved for treating specific breast cancer. However, there is no comprehensive study about PI3Kα inhibitor in gastric cancer. In this study, we found pharmacological inhibition or knockdown of PI3Kα effectively inhibited the proliferation of partial gastric cancer cells. Then, we systematically explored the potential biomarkers for predicting or monitoring treatment response according to previous reports and found that basal expression of several receptor tyrosine kinases were related with the sensitivity of gastric cancer cells to BYL719. Next, RNA-seq technique was utilized and showed that BYL719 inhibited Myc targets V2 gene set in sensitive gastric cancer cells, and western blotting further verified that c-Myc was only inhibited in sensitive gastric cancer cells. More importantly, we firstly found BYL719 significantly elevated the expression of PIK3IP1 in sensitive gastric cancer cells, which was also observed in NCI-N87 cell derived xenograft mice models. Meanwhile, knockdown of PIK3IP1 partially rescued the cell growth inhibited by BYL719 in sensitive gastric cancer cells, suggesting the important role of PIK3IP1 in the antitumor activity of BYL719. In conclusion, our study provides biological evidence that PI3Kα is a promising target in specific gastric cancer and the elevation of PIK3IP1 could supply as a biomarker that monitoring treatment response.