1. MENA Confers Resistance to Paclitaxel in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
- Author
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Madeleine J. Oudin, Lucie Barbier, Douglas A. Lauffenburger, Frank B. Gertler, Tatsiana Kosciuk, Oliver Jonas, Claudia Schäfer, Sangyoon J. Han, Miles A. Miller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, Oudin, Madeleine Julie, Barbier, Lucie, Schafer, Claudia, Kosciuk, Tatsiana, Miller, Miles Aaron, Lauffenburger, Douglas A, and Gertler, Frank
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Cancer Research ,Paclitaxel ,Cell Survival ,MAP Kinase Signaling System ,Gene Expression ,Triple Negative Breast Neoplasms ,macromolecular substances ,Pharmacology ,Microtubules ,Article ,Metastasis ,03 medical and health sciences ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Mice ,Breast cancer ,Cell Movement ,Cell Line, Tumor ,Medicine ,Animals ,Humans ,Protein Isoforms ,Neoplasm Metastasis ,Triple-negative breast cancer ,Taxane ,business.industry ,MEK inhibitor ,Cell Cycle ,Microfilament Proteins ,Cancer ,medicine.disease ,Metastatic breast cancer ,Antineoplastic Agents, Phytogenic ,Xenograft Model Antitumor Assays ,Tumor Burden ,Disease Models, Animal ,030104 developmental biology ,Oncology ,chemistry ,Drug Resistance, Neoplasm ,Cancer research ,Female ,business - Abstract
Taxane therapy remains the standard of care for triple-negative breast cancer. However, high frequencies of recurrence and progression in treated patients indicate that metastatic breast cancer cells can acquire resistance to this drug. The actin regulatory protein MENA and particularly its invasive isoform, MENAINV, are established drivers of metastasis. MENAINV expression is significantly correlated with metastasis and poor outcome in human patients with breast cancer. We investigated whether MENA isoforms might play a role in driving resistance to chemotherapeutics. We find that both MENA and MENAINV confer resistance to the taxane paclitaxel, but not to the widely used DNA-damaging agents doxorubicin or cisplatin. Furthermore, paclitaxel treatment does not attenuate growth of MENAINV-driven metastatic lesions. Mechanistically, MENA isoform expression alters the ratio of dynamic and stable microtubule populations in paclitaxel-treated cells. MENA expression also increases MAPK signaling in response to paclitaxel treatment. Decreasing ERK phosphorylation by co-treatment with MEK inhibitor restored paclitaxel sensitivity by driving microtubule stabilization in MENA isoform–expressing cells. Our results reveal a novel mechanism of taxane resistance in highly metastatic breast cancer cells and identify a combination therapy to overcome such resistance. Mol Cancer Ther; 16(1); 143–55. ©2016 AACR.
- Published
- 2016