Potentiated anti-tumor effects of BETi by MEKi in anaplastic thyroid cancer

Abstract

Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is an aggressive malignancy with limited treatment options. We explored novel treatment modalities by targeting epigenetic modifications using inhibitors of BET (e.g. BRD4) activity. We evaluated the efficacy in the treatment of ATC of a novel BET inhibitor, PLX51107 (PLX), currently in clinical trials for other solid tumors and hematologic malignancies, alone or combined with a MEK inhibitor, PD0325901(PD). To elucidate the effects of these inhibitors on growth of ATC, we treated ATC cells derived from patient tumors (THJ-11T and THJ-16T cells) and mouse xenograft tumors with inhibitors. We found PLX and PD inhibitors singly inhibited proliferation of both human ATC cells lines, but together exhibited stronger inhibition of proliferation. In mouse xenografts, the combination treatment almost totally blocked growth in xenograft tumors derived from both ATC cells. PD effectively attenuated MEK-ERK signaling, which was further enhanced by PLX in the combined treatment in cultured cells and tumors. Importantly, the combination of PLX and PD acted synergistically to suppress MYC transcription to increase p27 in decreasing tumor cell proliferation. PLX and PD cooperated to upregulate pro-apoptotic proteins to promote apoptosis. These two inhibitors converged to reduce the binding of BRD4 to the MYC promoter to suppress the MYC expression. These findings indicate that combined treatment of BET and MEK-ERK inhibitors was more effective to treat ATC than single targeted treatment. Synergistic suppression of MYC transcription via collaborative actions on chromatin modifications suggested that targeting epigenetic modifications could provide novel treatment opportunities for ATC.