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Cancer metabolism, including in mitochondria, is a disease hallmark and therapeutic target, but its regulation is poorly understood. Here, we show that many human tumors have heterogeneous and often reduced levels of Mic60, or Mitofilin, an essential scaffold of mitochondrial structure. Despite a catastrophic collapse of mitochondrial integrity, loss of bioenergetics, and oxidative damage, tumors with Mic60 depletion slow down cell proliferation, evade cell death, and activate a nuclear gene expression program of innate immunity and cytokine/chemokine signaling. In turn, this induces epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), activates tumor cell movements through exaggerated mitochondrial dynamics, and promotes metastatic dissemination in vivo. In a small-molecule drug screen, compensatory activation of stress response (GCN2) and survival (Akt) signaling maintains the viability of Mic60-low tumors and provides a selective therapeutic vulnerability. These data demonstrate that acutely damaged, "ghost" mitochondria drive tumor progression and expose an actionable therapeutic target in metastasis-prone cancers., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.

Molecular therapies are hallmarks of "personalized" medicine, but how tumors adapt to these agents is not well-understood. Here we show that small-molecule inhibitors of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) currently in the clinic induce global transcriptional reprogramming in tumors, with activation of growth factor receptors, (re)phosphorylation of Akt and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), and increased tumor cell motility and invasion. This response involves redistribution of energetically active mitochondria to the cortical cytoskeleton, where they support membrane dynamics, turnover of focal adhesion complexes, and random cell motility. Blocking oxidative phosphorylation prevents adaptive mitochondrial trafficking, impairs membrane dynamics, and suppresses tumor cell invasion. Therefore, "spatiotemporal" mitochondrial respiration adaptively induced by PI3K therapy fuels tumor cell invasion, and may provide an important antimetastatic target.