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Context: We investigated the role of Gallium 68 dodecanetetraacetic acid Tyr3-octreotide (68Ga-DOTATOC) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) in detecting somatostatin receptors (SSTRs) in 19 patients with metastatic adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) and explored the activity of yttrium-90/lutetium-177 (90Y/177Lu-DOTATOC) peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT)., Case Description and Methods: 68Ga uptake in metastatic sites was scored in terms of intensity and anatomical uptake distribution of standard uptake value (SUV). Tissue expression of SSTR2A and SSTR5 was also evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) on primary tumors. Eight (42%) patients displayed radiometabolic uptake of any-grade intensity with focal and limited distribution. Two (11%) patients displayed strong uptake in multiple lesions and were treated with PRRT. Both obtained an overall disease control lasting 4 and 12 months, respectively., Conclusions: ACC can express SSTRs as detected by IHC and 68Ga-DOTATOC PET. SSTRs-based PRRT may represent a potential treatment opportunity for a minority of patients with advanced ACC. This treatment modality deserves further investigation., (© Endocrine Society 2019. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objective: Temozolomide has shown a significant anti-proliferative activity on adrenocortical cancer (ACC) cells in vitro., Design: On the basis of these results the drug was prescribed as second/third line in advanced metastatic ACC patients in four referral centers in Italy., Methods: We retrospectively collected anagraphic, clinical and pathological data of patients with advanced ACC with disease progression to standard chemotherapy plus mitotane who were treated with temozolomide at the dose of 200 mg/m2/die given for 5 consecutive days every 28 days. The primary endpoint was the disease control rate, defined as objective response or disease stabilization after 3 months. Secondary endpoints were overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS) and drug safety., Results: Twenty-eight patients have been included in the study. Ten patients (35.8%, 95% CI: 17.8-53.8) obtained a disease control from temozolomide treatment. In particular, 1 patient had a complete response, 5 patients a partial response and 4 patients stable disease. Median PFS was 3.5 months and median OS was 7.2 months. Disease response was more frequently observed in patients with methylation of O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) gene. Temozolomide therapy was well tolerated and most toxicities were limited to grade G1-2 according to WHO criteria., Conclusion: Temozolomide was found active in the management of advanced ACC patients. The disease control rate obtained, however, was short-lived and the prognosis of treated patients was poor.

Molecular characterization of adrenocortical carcinoma has been recently established, but the correlation between molecular profiles and clinical and pathological characteristics is still poorly defined with no data available about genetic heterogeneity along disease progression. In this scenario, a detailed molecular profile was correlated with clinical and pathological characteristics in adrenocortical carcinoma patients to identify potentially novel biomarkers. Targeted next-generation sequencing and copy number variation analyses for 18 most frequently altered genes in adrenocortical carcinoma were assessed on 62 adult cases (including 10 with matched primary and metastatic/recurrence samples) and results correlated with major clinical and pathological characteristics of tumors. A total of 433 somatic deleterious genetic alterations (328 gene mutations and 105 copy number variations) were identified in 57/62 cases, five resulted wild type for all genes tested. TERT, CDK4, ZNRF3,and RB1 were altered in more than 30% of cases. Among histological variants genotypes were significantly different. Lowest mutation burden was found in the oncocytic type (p = 0.006), whereas the highest with a prevalence of RB1 (p = 0.001) and CDK4 (p = 0.002) was found in the conventional and myxoid ones, respectively. None of the 10 cases with matched samples showed a stable genotype along tumor progression, although allelic frequencies or percentages of altered nuclei at fluorescence in situ hybridization were in most cases similar among different tumor samples for genes that were stable along tumor progression. Among individual genes, an altered p53/Rb1 pathway was the strongest adverse molecular signature, being associated with high Ki-67 index, high tumor stage, aggressive disease status, and shorter disease-free survival. The genomic signature in adrenocortical carcinoma is changing along tumor progression and is associated with specific clinical and pathological features, including histological variant and prognosis.

One of the crucial challenges in the clinical management of cancer is the resistance to chemotherapeutics. We recently demonstrated that the Hedgehog receptor Patched, which is overexpressed in many recurrent and metastatic cancers, is a multidrug transporter for chemotherapeutic agents such as doxorubicin. The present work provides evidences that Patched is expressed in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) patients, and is a major player of the doxorubicin efflux and the doxorubicin resistance in the human ACC cell line H295R. We discovered that methiothepin inhibits the doxorubicin efflux activity of Patched. This drug-like molecule enhances the cytotoxic, pro-apoptotic, antiproliferative and anticlonogenic effects of doxorubicin on ACC cells which endogenously overexpress Patched, and thereby mitigates the resistance of these cancer cells to doxorubicin. Moreover, we report that in mice the combination of methiothepin with doxorubicin prevents the development of xenografted ACC tumors more efficiently than doxorubicin alone by enhancing the accumulation of doxorubicin specifically in tumors without obvious undesirable side effects. Our results suggest that the use of an inhibitor of Patched drug efflux such as methiothepin in combination with doxorubicin could be a promising therapeutic option for adrenocortical carcinoma, and most likely also for other Patched-expressing cancers., (© 2018 UICC.)

Mitotane is the reference drug for adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) and the metabolic activation of the drug is considered as essential for its activity. The aim of this study was to assess the role of CYP11B1 on mitotane action and metabolism in H295R ACC cells to understand whether this enzyme may influence mitotane action. The simultaneous incubation with mitotane and metyrapone, an adrenolytic molecule targeting 11-beta-hydroxylase, did not influence mitotane-mediated cytotoxic effect and metabolism in H295R ACC cells. CYP11B1 silencing confirmed the lack of a significant metyrapone effect on mitotane action. The present findings do not support the view that CYP11B1 catalyzes a crucial step in the metabolic activation of mitotane and that CYP11B1 confers the adrenal specificity to mitotane.

New therapies for advanced adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) are urgently needed, as the majority of the patients experience a rapid and inexorable progression despite surgery and adjuvant mitotane. In vitro data suggest that somatostatin receptors (SSTRs) and mTOR pathway might represent reasonable targets for novel therapies, being involved in functionality and growth of ACC cells. However, in vitro analysis of combination treatments targeting both mTOR and SSTR as compared to mitotane are poorly explored in ACC. This study aimed to investigate in vitro the effects on cell growth of pasireotide, everolimus, and mitotane, alone or combined, in the two ACC cell lines H295R and SW13 (mitotane sensitive and resistant, respectively). Moreover, the tissue expression of mTOR pathway molecules and SSTR (types 1-5) was assessed in 58 ACCs. In both cell lines, only everolimus induced a significant inhibition of cell growth. Conversely, the combinations among mitotane, pasireotide, and everolimus produced antagonistic effects on mitotane-induced growth inhibition on H295R cell line. A heterogeneous profile of mTOR-related molecules and SSTR expression was observed in ACC samples, being the mTOR pathway found activated in approximately 30% of cases. In conclusion, our data suggest caution in designing combinations of mitotane with other drugs potentially active in ACC, such as mTOR inhibitors or somatostatin analogs.

Adrenocortical carcinoma is generally considered a single entity by pathologists and clinicians. Nevertheless, the knowledge cumulated along the last decade on the pathological characterization, the clinical outcome and the molecular pathogenesis of adrenocortical carcinoma demonstrate that one of the most relevant emerging issues is related to its heterogeneity. Three major morphological variants have been described (oncocytic, myxoid and sarcomatoid) but are not included in the current WHO classification, yet. Moreover, even "conventional" adrenocortical carcinomas have a high degree of morphological heterogeneity as well as different mitotic/proliferative capacity, either among different cases or within individual lesions. Furthermore, immunohistochemical and molecular studies, based on a wide set of different methodologies, identified novel biomarkers in adrenocortical carcinoma of diagnostic and prognostic relevance, which claimed again the concept that this tumor type represents an heterogeneous group of neoplasms which cannot be considered a unique entity. The integration between morphology, immunophenotype and molecular data is expected in the next years to build a novel concept of adrenocortical carcinoma classification into specific subgroups, as it is currently approached for other types of neoplasms such as breast or lung cancer, which are not merely descriptive, but also characterized by a specific biological and clinical behavior.

Several microRNAs (miRNAs) were shown to be deregulated in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) as compared with adenoma, but a detailed assessment of their expression in its histologic variants and correlation with clinicopathologic characteristics has not been performed, so far. Our aim was to assess the expression of 5 selected miRNAs (IGF2 gene-related miR-483-3p and 5p and hypoxia-induced miR-210, miR-195, and miR-1974) in a series of 51 ACCs (35 classical, 6 myxoid, and 10 oncocytic) as compared with clinical and pathologic features and immunohistochemical expression of prognostic markers, including steroidogenic factor 1, p53, β-catenin, and glucose transporter 1. Oncocytic carcinomas had a reduced expression of miR-483-3p (P = .0325), miR-483-5p (P = .0175), and miR-210 (P = .0366), as compared with other histotypes. Overexpression of miR-210 was associated with the presence of necrosis (P = .0035), high Ki-67 index (P = .0013), and high glucose transporter 1 expression (P = .0043), whereas an inverse correlation with mitotic rate was observed in cases with high miR-493-3p (P = .0191) and miR-1974 (P = .0017) expression. High miR-1974 was also associated with low Ki-67 (P = .0312) and European Network for the Study of Adrenal Tumors stage (P = .0082) and negative p53 (P = .0013). At univariate analysis myxoid/classic histotype (P = .026), high miR-210 (P = .0465), high steroidogenic factor 1 protein (P = .0017), high Ki-67 (P = .0066), and high mitotic index (P = .0006) were significantly associated the shorter overall survival, the latter being the sole independent prognostic factor at multivariate analysis (P = .017). In conclusion, (a) miR-483-3p, miR-483-5p, and miR-210 are differentially expressed in ACC variants, and (b) high miR-210 is associated with clinicopathologic parameters of aggressiveness and a poor prognosis., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We aimed at investigating in vitro the cytotoxic activity (determined using WST-1, apoptosis and cell cycle assays) of gemcitabine, alone or in combination with mitotane, in mitotane-sensitive H295R and mitotane-insensitive SW-13 cells. Results of these experiments were compared with drug-induced modulation of RRM1 gene, the specific target of gemcitabine. In H295R cells, mitotane and gemcitabine combinations showed antagonistic effects and interfered with the gemcitabine-mediated inhibition of the S phase of the cell cycle. By contrast, in SW-13 cells, except when mitotane was sequentially administered prior to gemcitabine, the combination of the two drugs was synergistic. Such opposite effects were associated with opposite expression profiles of the target gene, with significant up-modulation in H295R but not in SW-13 under gemcitabine and mitotane combination treatment., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)