Indospicine combined with arginine deprivation triggers cancer cell death via caspase-dependent apoptosis.

Arginine-deprivation therapy is a rapidly developing metabolic anticancer approach. To overcome the resistance of some cancer cells to this monotherapy, rationally designed combination modalities are needed. In this report, we evaluated for the first time indospicine, an arginine analogue of Indigofera plant genus origin, as potential enhancer compound for the metabolic therapy that utilizes recombinant human arginase I. We demonstrate that indospicine at low micromolar concentrations is selectively toxic for human colorectal cancer cells only in the absence of arginine. In arginine-deprived cancer cells indospicine deregulates some prosurvival pathways (PI3K-Akt and MAPK) and activates mammalian target of rapamycin, exacerbates endoplasmic reticulum stress and triggers caspase-dependent apoptosis, which is reversed by the exposure to translation inhibitors. Simultaneously, indospicine is not degraded by recombinant human arginase I and does not inhibit this arginine-degrading enzyme at its effective dose. The obtained results emphasize the potential of arginine structural analogues as efficient components for combinatorial metabolic targeting of malignant cells.

The purification and identification of human blood serum proteins with affinity to the antitumor active RL2 lactaptin using magnetic microparticles.

The cytopoxic effect of RL2 lactaptin (the recombinant analog of proteolytic fragment of human kappa-casein) toward tumor cells in vitro and in vivo presents it as a novel promising antitumor drug. The binding of any drug with serum proteins can affect their activity, distribution, rate of excretion and toxicity in the human body. Here, we studied the ability of RL2 to bind to various blood serum proteins. Using magnetic microparticles bearing by RL2 as an affinity matrix, in combination with mass spectrometry and western blot analysis, we found a number of blood serum proteins possessing affinity for RL2. Among them IgA, IgM and IgG subclasses of immunoglobulins, apolipoprotein A1 and various cortactin isoforms were identified. This data suggests that in the bloodstream RL2 lactaptin takes part in complicate protein-protein interactions, which can affect its activity.

A Complex Scenario and Underestimated Challenge: The Tumor Microenvironment, ER Stress, and Cancer Treatment.

The paradoxical role of ER stress in malignant diseases is only just being unraveled and remains incompletely understood. A particular challenge is the complex interplay between spaciotemporal and locoregional microenvironmental constraints in solid tumors and stress responses upon treatment; thus, the potential for new combinatorial therapeutic options to foster the coincidence of ER stress-related deadly events is likely to be underestimated. Without claiming this review to be complete, we present a comprehensive overview of the signaling mechanisms associated with the unfolded protein response (UPR) and the molecular link to cell survival and death mechanisms. We (i) delineate the mechanistic scenario and outcome of the UPR; (ii) discuss the role of ER stress in cancer development and progression; (iii) highlight the impact of various environmental conditions and stress stimuli, such as nutrient limitation and tumor hypoxia, in this context; and (iv) attempt to shed some light on the putative link between DNA damage, irradiation, and ER stress to emphasize the potential of therapeutic targeting of ER stress pathways for combined cancer treatments.

Nitric oxide donor augments antineoplastic effects of arginine deprivation in human melanoma cells.

Anticancer therapy based on recombinant arginine-degrading enzymes has been proposed for the treatment of several types of malignant cells deficient in arginine biosynthesis. One of the predicted side effects of such therapy is restricted bioavailability of nitric oxide as arginine catabolic product. Prolonged NO limitation may lead to unwanted disturbances in NO-dependent vasodilation, cardiovascular and immune systems. This problem can be overcome by co-supplementation with exogenous NO donor. However, NO may potentially counteract anticancer effects of therapy based on arginine deprivation. In this study, we evaluate for the first time the effects of an exogenous NO donor, sodium nitroprusside, on viability and metastatic properties of two human melanoma cell lines SK-MEL-28 and WM793 under arginine-deprived conditions. It was revealed that NO did not rescue melanoma cells from specific effects evoked by arginine deprivation, namely decreased viability and induction of apoptosis, dramatically reduced motility, invasiveness and clonogenic potential. Moreover, sodium nitroprusside co-treatment augmented several of these antineoplastic effects. We report that a combination of NO-donor and arginine deprivation strongly and specifically impaired metastatic behavior of melanoma cells. Thus, sodium nitroprusside can be considered as an adjuvant for the more efficient treatment of malignant melanoma and possibly other tumors with arginine-degrading enzymes.

Co-application of canavanine and irradiation uncouples anticancer potential of arginine deprivation from citrulline availability.

The moderate anticancer effect of arginine deprivation in clinical trials has been linked to an induced argininosuccinate synthetase (ASS1) expression in initially ASS1-negative tumors, and ASS1-positive cancers are anticipated as non-responders. Our previous studies indicated that arginine deprivation and low doses of the natural arginine analog canavanine can enhance radioresponse. However, the efficacy of the proposed combination in the presence of extracellular citrulline, the substrate for arginine synthesis by ASS1, remains to be elucidated, in particular for malignant cells with positive and/or inducible ASS1 as in colorectal cancer (CRC). Here, the physiological citrulline concentration of 0.05 mM was insufficient to overcome cell cycle arrest and radiosensitization triggered by arginine deficiency. Hyperphysiological citrulline (0.4 mM) did not entirely compensate for the absence of arginine and significantly decelerated cell cycling. Similar levels of canavanine-induced apoptosis were detected in the absence of arginine regardless of citrulline supplementation both in 2-D and advanced 3-D assays, while normal colon epithelial cells in organoid/colonosphere culture were unaffected. Notably, canavanine tremendously enhanced radiosensitivity of arginine-starved 3-D CRC spheroids even in the presence of hyperphysiological citrulline. We conclude that the novel combinatorial targeting strategy of metabolic-chemo-radiotherapy has great potential for the treatment of malignancies with inducible ASS1 expression.

Arginine starvation in colorectal carcinoma cells: Sensing, impact on translation control and cell cycle distribution.

Tumor cells rely on a continued exogenous nutrient supply in order to maintain a high proliferative activity. Although a strong dependence of some tumor types on exogenous arginine sources has been reported, the mechanisms of arginine sensing by tumor cells and the impact of changes in arginine availability on translation and cell cycle regulation are not fully understood. The results presented herein state that human colorectal carcinoma cells rapidly exhaust the internal arginine sources in the absence of exogenous arginine and repress global translation by activation of the GCN2-mediated pathway and inhibition of mTOR signaling. Tumor suppressor protein p53 activation and G1/G0 cell cycle arrest support cell survival upon prolonged arginine starvation. Cells with the mutant or deleted TP53 fail to stop cell cycle progression at defined cell cycle checkpoints which appears to be associated with reduced recovery after durable metabolic stress triggered by arginine withdrawal.

Arginine deprivation induces endoplasmic reticulum stress in human solid cancer cells.

Deprivation for the single amino acid arginine is a rapidly developing metabolic anticancer therapy, which allows growth control in a number of highly malignant tumors. Here we report that one of the responses of human solid cancer cells to arginine starvation is the induction of prolonged endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR). Systematic study of two colorectal carcinoma HCT-116 and HT29, glioblastoma U251 MG and ovarian carcinoma SKOV3 cell lines revealed, however, that the ER stress triggered by the absence of arginine does not result in massive apoptosis despite a profound upregulation of the proapoptotic gene CHOP. Instead, Akt- and MAPK-dependent pathways were activated which may counteract proapoptotic signaling. Treatment with DMSO as a disaggregating agent or with cycloheximide to block protein synthesis reduced ER stress evoked by arginine deprivation. On the other hand, ER stress and apoptosis induction in arginine-starved cells could be critically augmented by the arginine analog of plant origin canavanine, but not by the classic ER stress inducer tunicamycin. Our data suggest that canavanine treatment applied under the lack of arginine may enhance the efficacy of arginine deprivation-based anticancer therapy.

Single amino acid arginine deprivation triggers prosurvival autophagic response in ovarian carcinoma SKOV3.

Autophagy is a process of cytosol-to-lysosome vesicle trafficking of cellular constituents for degradation and recycling of their building blocks. Autophagy becomes very important for cell viability under different stress conditions, in particular under amino acid limitation. In this report we demonstrate that single amino acid arginine deprivation triggers profound prosurvival autophagic response in cultured human ovarian cancer SKOV3 cells. In fact, a significant drop in viability of arginine-starved SKOV3 cells was observed when autophagy was inhibited by either coadministration of chloroquine or transcriptional silencing of the essential autophagy protein BECLIN 1. Enzymatic arginine deprivation is a novel anticancer therapy undergoing clinical trials. This therapy is considered nontoxic and selective, as it allows controlling the growth of malignant tumours deficient in arginine biosynthesis. We propose that arginine deprivation-based combinational treatments that include autophagy inhibitors (e.g., chloroquine) may produce a stronger anticancer effect as a second line therapy for a subset of chemoresistant ovarian cancers.

Three-dimensional environment renders cancer cells profoundly less susceptible to a single amino acid starvation.

Increased amino acid requirement of malignant cells is exploited in metabolic antitumor therapy, e.g., enzymotherapies based on arginine or methionine deprivation. However, studies on animal models and clinical trials revealed that solid tumors are much less susceptible to single amino acid starvation than could be expected from the in vitro data. We conducted a comparative analysis of the response of several tumor cell lines to single amino acid starvation in 2-D monolayer versus 3-D spheroid culture. We revealed for the first time that in comparison with monolayer culture tumor cells, spheroids are much less susceptible to the deprivation of individual amino acids (i.e., arginine, leucine, lysine or methionine). Accordingly, even after prolonged (up to 10 days) starvation, spheroid cells could readily resume proliferation when appropriate amino acid was resupplemented. In the case of arginine deprivation, similar apoptosis induction was detected both in 2-D and 3-D culture, suggesting that this process does not determine the level of tumor cell sensitivity to this kind of treatment. It was also observed that spheroids much better mimic the in vivo ability of tumor cells to utilize citrulline as arginine precursor for growth in amino acid deficient environment. We conclude that 3-D spheroid culture better reflects in vivo tumor cell response to single amino acid starvation than 2-D monolayer culture and should be used as an integral model in the studies of this type of antitumor metabolic targeting.

Increased levels of the HER1 adaptor protein Rukl/CIN85 contribute to breast cancer malignancy.

The adaptor protein regulator for ubiquitous kinase/c-Cbl-interacting protein of 85kDa (Ruk/CIN85) was found to modulate HER1/EGFR signaling and processes like cell adhesion and apoptosis. Although these features imply a role in carcinogenesis, it is so far unknown how and by which molecular mechanisms Ruk/CIN85 could affect a certain tumor phenotype. By analyzing samples from breast cancer patients, we found high levels of Ruk(l)/CIN85 especially in lymph node metastases from patients with invasive breast adenocarcinomas, suggesting that Ruk(l)/CIN85 contributes to malignancy. Expression of Ruk(l)/CIN85 in weakly invasive breast adenocarcinoma cells deficient of Ruk(l)/CIN85 indeed converted them into more malignant cells. In particular, Ruk(l)/CIN85 reduced the growth rate, decreased cell adhesion, enhanced anchorage-independent growth, increased motility in both transwell migration and wound healing assays as well as affected the response to epidermal growth factor. Thereby, Ruk(l)/CIN85 led to a more rapid and prolonged epidermal growth factor-dependent activation of Src, Akt and ERK1/2 and treatment with the Src inhibitor PP2 and the PI3K inhibitor LY294002 abolished the Ruk(l)/CIN85-dependent changes in cell motility. Together, this study indicates that high levels of Ruk(l)/CIN85 contribute to the conversion of breast adenocarcinoma cells into a more malignant phenotype via modulation of the Src/Akt pathway.

Single amino acid arginine starvation efficiently sensitizes cancer cells to canavanine treatment and irradiation.

Single amino acid arginine deprivation is a promising strategy in modern metabolic anticancer therapy. Its potency to inhibit tumor growth warrants the search for rational chemo- and radio-therapeutic approaches to be co-applied. In this report, we evaluated, for the first time, the efficacy of arginine deprivation as anticancer therapy in three-dimensional (3D) cultures of human tumor cells, and propose a new combinatorial metabolic-chemo-radio-treatment regime based on arginine starvation, low doses of arginine natural analog canavanine and irradiation. A sophisticated experimental setup was designed to evaluate the impact of arginine starvation on four human epithelial cancer cell lines in 2D monolayer and 3D spheroid culture. Radioresponse was assessed in colony formation assays and by monitoring spheroid regrowth probability following single dose irradiation using a standardized spheroid-based test platform. Surviving fraction at 2 Gy (SF(2Gy)) and spheroid control dose(50) (SCD(50) ) were calculated as analytical endpoints. Cancer cells in spheroids are much more resistant to arginine starvation than in 2D culture. Spheroid volume stagnated during arginine deprivation, but even after 10 days of starvation, 100% of the spheroids regrew. Combination treatment, however, was remarkably efficient. In particular, pretreatment of cancer cells with the arginine-degrading enzyme arginase combined with or without low concentration of canavanine substantially enhanced cell radioresponse reflected by a loss in spheroid regrowth probability and SCD(50) values reduced by a factor of 1.5-3. Our data strongly suggest that arginine withdrawal alone or in combination with canavanine is a promising antitumor strategy with potential to enhance cancer cure by irradiation.

Canavanine augments proapoptotic effects of arginine deprivation in cultured human cancer cells.

Arginine deprivation achieved by means of recombinant arginine-degrading enzymes is currently being developed as a novel anticancer enzymotherapy. In this study, we showed that arginine deprivation in vitro profoundly and selectively sensitized human cancer cells of different organ origin to low doses of canavanine, an arginine analogue of plant origin. In sensitive cancer cells arginine starvation led to the activation of caspase-9, caspase-3 and caspase-7, cleavage of reparation enzyme, polyADP ribosyl polymerase, and DNA fragmentation, which are the typical hallmarks of intrinsic apoptosis realized by the mitochondrial pathway. Co-administration of canavanine significantly accelerated and enhanced apoptotic manifestations induced by arginine deprivation. The augmentation of canavanine toxicity for cancer cells was observed when either a formulated arginine-free medium or complete medium supplemented with bovine arginase preparation was used. Cycloheximide efficiently rescued malignant cells from canavanine-induced cytotoxicity under arginine deprivation, suggesting that it results mainly from canavanine incorporation into newly synthesized proteins. Cancer cells sensitive or resistant to arginine deprivation alone were not capable of restoring their proliferation after 24 h of combined treatment, whereas pseudonormal cells retained such ability. Our data suggest that the incorporation of canavanine into anticancer treatment schemes based on artificially created arginine starvation could be a novel strategy in tumor enzymochemotherapy.

Cancer cell sensitivity to arginine deprivation in vitro is not determined by endogenous levels of arginine metabolic enzymes.

Single amino acid Arg (arginine) deprivation is currently considered as a therapeutic approach to treat certain types of tumours; the molecular mechanisms that underlie tumour cell sensitivity or resistance to Arg restriction are still little understood. Here, we address the question of whether endogenous levels of key Arg metabolic enzymes [catabolic: arginases, ARG1 (arginase type 1) and ARG2 (arginase type 2), and anabolic: OTC (ornithine transcarbamylase) and ASS (argininosuccinate synthetase)] affect cellular responses to arginine deprivation in vitro. Human epithelial cancer cells of different organs of origin exhibiting variable sensitivity to Arg deprivation provided the experimental models. Neither the basal expression status of the analysed enzymes, nor their changes upon arginine withdrawal correlated with cancer cell sensitivity to arginine deprivation. However, the ability to utilize exogenous Arg precursors (ornithine and citrulline) for growth in Arg-deficient medium strongly correlated with expression of the corresponding enzymes, OTC and ASS. We also observed that OTC expression was below the level of detection in all the types of tumour cells analysed, suggesting that in vitro, at least for them, Arg is an essential amino acid.

Positive selection of mutants defective in transcriptional repression of riboflavin synthesis by iron in the flavinogenic yeast Pichia guilliermondii.

It is known for many years that iron represses synthesis of riboflavin (RF) and most of RF-synthesizing enzymes in several yeast species, known as flavinogenic yeasts. However, the mechanism of such repression is not known. We have found that iron represses transcription of RIB1 and RIB7 genes coding for the first and the last enzymes of RF biosynthesis in the model flavinogenic organism Pichia guilliermondii. To decipher molecular mechanisms of iron-dependent repression, isolation and study of the regulatory mutants defective in corresponding regulation is desirable. However, no suitable methods for isolation of such mutants were previously available. We have produced a single-point transition mutation in the RIB1 gene. The corresponding rib1-86 mutant exhibits leaky phenotype and is unable to grow in iron-sufficient minimal medium without exogenous RF. However, it can grow in minimal iron-deficient medium without RF, or in iron-sufficient medium upon introduction of the previously-isolated regulatory mutation rib81, which leads to increase in RF production. Using the rib1-86 mutant as parental strain, a collection of mutants able to grow in iron-sufficient medium without exogenous RF has been isolated. The mutants appeared to be defective in regulation of RF biosynthesis and iron homeostasis and were divided into six new complementation groups. Study of one corresponding mutant, red6, showed derepression of RIB1 mRNA synthesis in iron-sufficient medium.