title: Cystine addiction of triple-negative breast cancer associated with EMT augmented death signaling.
abstract: Despite the advances in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, breast cancers still cause significant mortality. For some patients, especially those with triple-negative breast cancer, current treatments continue to be limited and ineffective. Therefore, there remains an unmet need for a novel therapeutic approach. One potential strategy is to target the altered metabolic state that is rewired by oncogenic transformation. Specifically, this rewiring may render certain outside nutrients indispensable. To identify such a nutrient, we performed a nutrigenetic screen by removing individual amino acids to identify possible addictions across a panel of breast cancer cells. This screen revealed that cystine deprivation triggered rapid programmed necrosis, but not apoptosis, in the basal-type breast cancer cells mostly seen in TNBC tumors. In contrast, luminal-type breast cancer cells are cystine-independent and exhibit little death during cystine deprivation. The cystine addiction phenotype is associated with a higher level of cystine-deprivation signatures noted in the basal type breast cancer cells and tumors. We found that the cystine-addicted breast cancer cells and tumors have strong activation of TNFα and MEKK4-p38-Noxa pathways that render them susceptible to cystine deprivation-induced necrosis. Consistent with this model, silencing of TNFα and MEKK4 dramatically reduces cystine-deprived death. In addition, the cystine addiction phenotype can be abrogated in the cystine-addictive cells by miR-200c, which converts the mesenchymal-like cells to adopt epithelial features. Conversely, the introduction of inducers of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in cystine-independent breast cancer cells conferred the cystine-addiction phenotype by modulating the signaling components of cystine addiction. Together, our data reveal that cystine-addiction is associated with EMT in breast cancer during tumor progression. These findings provide the genetic and mechanistic basis to explain how cystine deprivation triggers necrosis by activating pre-existing oncogenic pathways in cystine-addicted TNBC with prominent mesenchymal features.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.|Center for Genomic and Computational Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.|Department of Biological Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA.
authors.forename: X
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.|Center for Genomic and Computational Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: C-K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.|Center for Genomic and Computational Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sjol
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wardell
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Spasojevic
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: George
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: D P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: McDonnell
authors.affiliation: Center for Genomic and Computational Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.|Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: D S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: J T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.|Center for Genomic and Computational Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: J-T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Chi
mesh_terms: D003545:Cysteine / Q000378:metabolism*; D058750:Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009336:Necrosis / Q000378:metabolism; D010641:Phenotype; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology; D064726:Triple Negative Breast Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology*
chemical_list: D003545:Cysteine