Back

ALK signalling primes the DNA damage response sensitizing ALK-driven neuroblastoma to ATR inhibition

Borenäs, M.; Umapathy, G.; Lind, D. E.; Lai, W.-Y.; Guan, J.; Johansson, J.; Jennische, E.; Schmidt, A.; Kurhe, Y. V.; Gabre, J. L.; Aniszewska, A.; Strömberg, A.; Bemark, M.; Hall, M. N.; Van den Eynden, J.; Hallberg, B.; Palmer, R. H.

2023-09-04 cancer biology
10.1101/2023.08.30.555570 bioRxiv
Show abstract

High-risk neuroblastoma (NB) is a significant clinical challenge. MYCN and ALK, which are often involved in high-risk NB, lead to increased replication stress in cancer cells, suggesting therapeutic strategies. We previously identified an ATR/ALK inhibitor (ATRi/ALKi) combination as such a strategy in two independent genetically modified mouse NB models. Here, we identify an underlying molecular mechanism, in which ALK signalling leads to phosphorylation of ATR and CHK1, supporting an effective DNA damage response. The importance of ALK inhibition is supported by mouse data, in which ATRi monotreatment resulted in a robust initial response, but subsequent relapse, in contrast to a 14-day ALKi/ATRi combination treatment that resulted in a robust and sustained response. Finally, we show that the remarkable response to the 14-day combined ATR/ALK inhibition protocol reflects a robust differentiation response, reprogramming tumour cells to a neuronal/Schwann cell lineage identity. Our results identify a unique ability of ATR inhibition to trigger neuroblastoma differentiation and underscore the importance of further exploring combined ALK/ATR inhibition in NB, particularly in high-risk patient groups with oncogene-induced replication stress.

Matching journals

The top 9 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.