Siu Allan, Virtanen Carl, Jongstra Jan
Department of Immunology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Oncotarget. 2011 Dec;2(12):1134-44. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.386.
The PIM family of oncogenic serine/threonine kinases regulates tumour cell proliferation. To identify proliferative signaling pathways that are regulated by PIM kinases we analyzed gene expression differences in DU-145 and PC3 prostate cancer derived cells induced by treatment with the recently developed highly selective PIM kinase inhibitor M-110. This identified 97 genes the expression of which is affected by M-110 in both cell lines. We then focused on the M-110 induced up regulation of the MIG6 gene that encodes a negative regulator of EGFR signaling. Here we show that M-110 and the structurally unrelated PIM kinase inhibitor SGI-1776 up regulate MIG6 in DU-145 and PC3 cells. Knockdown of PIM-1 but not of PIM-2 or PIM-3 also up regulates MIG6 expression, which identifies MIG6 as a PIM-1 regulated gene. In agreement with the role of MIG6 protein as a negative regulator of EGFR signaling we found that M-110 treatment inhibits EGF induced EGFR activation and the activation of the downstream ERK MAPkinase pathway. The biological significance of these findings are demonstrated by the fact that co-treatment of DU-145 or PC3 cells with the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor Gefitinib and M-110 or SGI-1776 has synergistic inhibitory effects on cell proliferation. These experiments define a novel biological function of PIM-1 as a co-regulator of EGFR signaling and suggest that PIM inhibitors may be used in combination therapies to increase the efficacy of EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors.
致癌性丝氨酸/苏氨酸激酶的PIM家族调节肿瘤细胞增殖。为了鉴定受PIM激酶调节的增殖信号通路,我们分析了用最近开发的高选择性PIM激酶抑制剂M-110处理诱导的DU-145和PC3前列腺癌细胞系中的基因表达差异。这鉴定出97个基因,其表达在两种细胞系中均受M-110影响。然后我们聚焦于M-110诱导的编码EGFR信号负调节因子的MIG6基因上调。在此我们表明,M-110和结构不相关的PIM激酶抑制剂SGI-1776在DU-145和PC3细胞中上调MIG6。敲低PIM-1而非PIM-2或PIM-3也上调MIG6表达,这将MIG6鉴定为PIM-1调节基因。与MIG6蛋白作为EGFR信号负调节因子的作用一致,我们发现M-110处理抑制EGF诱导的EGFR激活以及下游ERK MAP激酶途径的激活。DU-145或PC3细胞与EGFR酪氨酸激酶抑制剂吉非替尼和M-110或SGI-1776共同处理对细胞增殖具有协同抑制作用,这一事实证明了这些发现的生物学意义。这些实验确定了PIM-1作为EGFR信号的共同调节因子的新生物学功能,并表明PIM抑制剂可用于联合治疗以提高EGFR酪氨酸激酶抑制剂的疗效。