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PIK3CA mutation sensitizes breast cancer cells to synergistic therapy of PI3K inhibition and AMPK activation

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Breast cancer has been emerging as a most common threat among women, thus many efforts were made to find drugs for fighting breast cancer. So far, PI3K (Phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase) inhibitors have been believed to be effective drugs until frequent resistance emerged. Recently, PI3K H1047R mutation has been reported to sensitize breast cancer cells to PI3K inhibition by aspirin. Considering aspirin activates AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase) simultaneously, it is possible that AMPK activators and PI3K inhibitors can synergistically inhibit breast cancers. Here we clearly observed synergistic suppression of cell growth in all three breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7, MDA-MB-361 and HCC38) when co-treating cells with PI3K inhibitor GDC-0941 and AMPK activator AICAR (5-Aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide). What is more, it is rather remarkable that the synergistic effect was much more dramatic in PIK3CA (PI3K catalytic subunit alpha) mutated (E545K) cells (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-361) than in PIK3CA wild-type cells (HCC38), which implied there is a relationship between PI3K genetic status and the efficacy of combination therapy. By using PIK3CA wild-type isogenic MCF-7 cell line, which exhibited attenuated cell proliferation compared with the parental MCF-7 cell line, we found endogenous reverse mutation of PIK3CA E545K alleles to wild-type sequence in MCF-7 cells dramatically impaired the synergy of PI3Ki&AMPKa (combinatorial PI3K inhibition and AMPK activation). Furthermore, PI3Ki&AMPKa significantly attenuated tumorigenesis of parental MCF-7 cells but not PIK3CA wild-type isogenic MCF-7 cells in tumor xenograft models. Taken together, our results suggest a promising precision therapy of PI3Ki&AMPKa in PIK3CA mutant breast cancers.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Haian Fu (Emory University, Atlanta, USA) for kindly giving us the parental MCF-7 and PIK3CA wild-type isogenic MCF-7 cell lines. This work is funded by the Research Foundation of Education Bureau of Hunan Province, China (Grant No. 2050205).

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  1. Songlin Liu and Yunhong Tang contributed equally to this work.

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  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, 87 Xiangya Road, Changsha, Hunan, 410008, China

    Songlin Liu, Yunhong Tang & Weixi Jiang

  2. Department of Pharmacology, Emory University, 1510 Clifton Rd, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Maomao Yan

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  1. Songlin Liu
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Correspondence to Weixi Jiang.

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Liu, S., Tang, Y., Yan, M. et al. PIK3CA mutation sensitizes breast cancer cells to synergistic therapy of PI3K inhibition and AMPK activation. Invest New Drugs 36, 763–772 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10637-018-0563-3

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