Tamori Shoma, Matsuda Chika, Kasai Takahiro, Ohno Shigeo, Sasaki Kazunori, Akimoto Kazunori
Department of Medicinal and Life Sciences, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan.
Research Division of Medical Data Science, Research Institute for Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science, Chiba, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2025 Apr 22;15(1):13932. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-97985-2.
Metabolic heterogeneity in various cancer cells within a tumor causes resistance to medical therapies and promotes tumor recurrence and metastasis. However, the mechanisms by which tumors acquire metabolic heterogeneity are poorly understood. Here, we revealed that PKCλ-dependent asymmetric division of ALDH1-positive cancer stem cells (CSCs) led to an uneven distribution of glycolytic capacity, which is crucial for understanding metabolic heterogeneity within a tumor. The rate-limiting enzyme PFKP and the metabolic probe CDG in glycolysis codistributed with the ALDH1A3 protein during the post-cell division phase, highlighting a mechanism for acquiring metabolic diversity. PKCλ deficiency reduced the asymmetric distribution of these proteins in ALDH1 cells with high ALDH1 activity, suggesting a fundamental role for PKCλ in metabolic heterogeneity. We identified 28 distinct distribution patterns combining PFKP and CDG distributions, demonstrating the complexity of glycolytic heterogeneity. Furthermore, validation and prediction of cell distribution patterns via a probabilistic model confirmed that PKCλ deficiency diminished glycolytic diversity in individual cells within a cancer cell colony generated from an ALDH1-positive CSC. These findings suggest that PKCλ-dependent asymmetric cell division of ALDH1-positive CSCs is crucial for glycolytic heterogeneity in cancer cells within a tumor, potentially offering new therapeutic targets against tumor resistance and metastasis.
肿瘤内各种癌细胞的代谢异质性会导致对医学治疗产生抗性,并促进肿瘤复发和转移。然而,肿瘤获得代谢异质性的机制仍知之甚少。在这里,我们发现蛋白激酶Cλ(PKCλ)依赖的醛脱氢酶1阳性癌症干细胞(CSCs)不对称分裂导致糖酵解能力分布不均,这对于理解肿瘤内的代谢异质性至关重要。糖酵解中的限速酶磷酸果糖激酶P(PFKP)和代谢探针2-脱氧葡萄糖(CDG)在细胞分裂后期与醛脱氢酶1A3(ALDH1A3)蛋白共分布,突出了一种获得代谢多样性的机制。PKCλ缺陷减少了这些蛋白在具有高ALDH1活性的ALDH1细胞中的不对称分布,表明PKCλ在代谢异质性中起重要作用。我们确定了结合PFKP和CDG分布的28种不同分布模式,证明了糖酵解异质性的复杂性。此外,通过概率模型对细胞分布模式进行验证和预测证实,PKCλ缺陷减少了由ALDH1阳性CSC产生的癌细胞集落中单个细胞的糖酵解多样性。这些发现表明,PKCλ依赖的ALDH1阳性CSCs不对称细胞分裂对于肿瘤内癌细胞的糖酵解异质性至关重要,可能为对抗肿瘤抗性和转移提供新的治疗靶点。