Abstract
Radiotherapy is commonly used to treat a variety of solid human tumors, including localized prostate cancer. However, treatment failure often ensues due to tumor intrinsic or acquired radioresistance. Here we find that the MEK5/ERK5 signaling pathway is associated with resistance to genotoxic stress in aggressive prostate cancer cells. MEK5 knockdown by RNA interference sensitizes prostate cancer cells to ionizing radiation (IR) and etoposide treatment, as assessed by clonogenic survival and short-term proliferation assays. Mechanistically, MEK5 downregulation impairs phosphorylation of the catalytic subunit of DNA-PK at serine 2056 in response to IR or etoposide treatment. Although MEK5 knockdown does not influence the initial appearance of radiation- and etoposide-induced γH2AX and 53BP1 foci, it markedly delays their resolution, indicating a DNA repair defect. A cell-based assay shows that nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) is compromised in cells with ablated MEK5 protein expression. Finally, MEK5 silencing combined with focal irradiation causes strong inhibition of tumor growth in mouse xenografts, compared with MEK5 depletion or radiation alone. These findings reveal a convergence between MEK5 signaling and DNA repair by NHEJ in conferring resistance to genotoxic stress in advanced prostate cancer and suggest targeting MEK5 as an effective therapeutic intervention in the management of this disease.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program, W81XWH-15-1-0296 (CGB). This study also used the resources of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center Flow Cytometry, Radiation Research, and Confocal and Specialized Microscopy Shared Resources funded in part through Center Grant P30CA013696. We thank Theresa Swayne and Laura Munteanu from the Confocal and Specialized Microscopy Shared Resource of the Irving Cancer Research Center (ICRC) and Drs. Siu-Hong Ho, Wei Wang, and Caisheng Lu from the Flow Cytometry Shared Resource of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center for their help in performing the immunofluorescence and flow cytometry experiments.
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Broustas, C.G., Duval, A.J., Chaudhary, K.R. et al. Targeting MEK5 impairs nonhomologous end-joining repair and sensitizes prostate cancer to DNA damaging agents. Oncogene 39, 2467–2477 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-020-1163-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-020-1163-1
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