Journal
CELL DEATH & DISEASE
Volume 13, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
SPRINGERNATURE
DOI: 10.1038/s41419-021-04495-w
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Funding
- National Cancer Institute of the NIH (Bethesda, MD, USA) [P01CA125066, 1F30CA217079]
- Graduate Fellowship in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education
- MEDI Division Fellowship from the American Chemical Society
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PHY34 is a synthetic small molecule with potent anticancer activity against ovarian cancer cells. It induces apoptosis in these cells by inhibiting late-stage autophagy. CAS protein is identified as a likely target of PHY34, and its elevated expression in HGSOC is associated with worse clinical outcomes. Additionally, PHY34 interacts with ATP6V0A2 subunit and induces cell death.
PHY34 is a synthetic small molecule, inspired by a compound naturally occurring in tropical plants of the Phyllanthus genus. PHY34 was developed to have potent in vitro and in vivo anticancer activity against high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) cells. Mechanistically, PHY34 induced apoptosis in ovarian cancer cells by late-stage autophagy inhibition. Furthermore, PHY34 significantly reduced tumor burden in a xenograft model of ovarian cancer. In order to identify its molecular target/s, we undertook an unbiased approach utilizing mass spectrometry-based chemoproteomics. Protein targets from the nucleocytoplasmic transport pathway were identified from the pulldown assay with the cellular apoptosis susceptibility (CAS) protein, also known as CSE1L, representing a likely candidate protein. A tumor microarray confirmed data from mRNA expression data in public databases that CAS expression was elevated in HGSOC and correlated with worse clinical outcomes. Overexpression of CAS reduced PHY34 induced apoptosis in ovarian cancer cells based on PARP cleavage and Annexin V staining. Compounds with a diphyllin structure similar to PHY34 have been shown to inhibit the ATP6V0A2 subunit of V(vacuolar)-ATPase. Therefore, ATP6V0A2 wild-type and ATP6V0A2 V823 mutant cell lines were tested with PHY34, and it was able to induce cell death in the wild-type at 246 pM while the mutant cells were resistant up to 55.46 nM. Overall, our data demonstrate that PHY34 is a promising small molecule for cancer therapy that targets the ATP6V0A2 subunit to induce autophagy inhibition while interacting with CAS and altering nuclear localization of proteins.
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