Tumour micro-environment elicits innate resistance to RAF inhibitors through HGF secretion.

Nature
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

Drug resistance presents a challenge to the treatment of cancer patients. Many studies have focused on cell-autonomous mechanisms of drug resistance. By contrast, we proposed that the tumour micro-environment confers innate resistance to therapy. Here we developed a co-culture system to systematically assay the ability of 23 stromal cell types to influence the innate resistance of 45 cancer cell lines to 35 anticancer drugs. We found that stroma-mediated resistance is common, particularly to targeted agents. We characterized further the stroma-mediated resistance of BRAF-mutant melanoma to RAF inhibitors because most patients with this type of cancer show some degree of innate resistance. Proteomic analysis showed that stromal cell secretion of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) resulted in activation of the HGF receptor MET, reactivation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase (PI(3)K)-AKT signalling pathways, and immediate resistance to RAF inhibition. Immunohistochemistry experiments confirmed stromal cell expression of HGF in patients with BRAF-mutant melanoma and showed a significant correlation between HGF expression by stromal cells and innate resistance to RAF inhibitor treatment. Dual inhibition of RAF and either HGF or MET resulted in reversal of drug resistance, suggesting RAF plus HGF or MET inhibitory combination therapy as a potential therapeutic strategy for BRAF-mutant melanoma. A similar resistance mechanism was uncovered in a subset of BRAF-mutant colorectal and glioblastoma cell lines. More generally, this study indicates that the systematic dissection of interactions between tumours and their micro-environment can uncover important mechanisms underlying drug resistance.

Year of Publication
2012
Journal
Nature
Volume
487
Issue
7408
Pages
500-4
Date Published
2012 Jul 26
ISSN
1476-4687
URL
DOI
10.1038/nature11183
PubMed ID
22763439
PubMed Central ID
PMC3711467
Links
Grant list
UM1 CA186709 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
P50 CA093683 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
U54CA112962 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
Howard Hughes Medical Institute / United States
U54 CA112962 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
P50CA093683 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States