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Phosphoinositide 3-kinase regulates wild-type RAS signaling to confer resistance to KRAS inhibition

Ge, X.; Singh, J.; Li, W.; Markham, C. S.; Ruiz, C. F.; Bhattacharyya, M.; Liu, Y.; Muzumdar, M. D.

2025-06-25 cancer biology
10.1101/2025.06.20.660715 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Despite the availability of RAS inhibitors and the dependence of >90% of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDAC) on oncogenic KRAS mutations, resistance to KRAS inhibition remains a serious obstacle. We show here that phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) plays a major role in this resistance through upstream activation of wild-type RAS signaling - beyond its known KRAS effector function. Combining proximity labeling, CRISPR screens, live-cell imaging, and functional assays we found that PI3K orchestrates phosphoinositide-mediated GAB1 recruitment to the plasma membrane, nucleating assembly of RAS signaling complexes that activate mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) in an EGFR/SHP2/SOS1-dependent manner. We further demonstrate that inhibiting PI3K enhances sensitivity to mutant-specific KRAS inhibitors in PDAC cells, including cells with clinically identified PIK3CA mutations. Our findings refine RAS-PI3K signaling paradigms, reveal that PI3K-driven wild-type RAS activation drives resistance to KRAS inhibition, and illuminate new avenues for augmenting KRAS-targeted therapies in PDAC.

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