Showing papers by "Peter D. Adams published in 2021"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors report enhanced toxicity of combined MDM2 inhibitors and BET inhibitors towards AML cell lines, primary human blasts and mouse models, resulting from BETi's ability to evict an unexpected repressive form of BRD4 from p53 target genes, and hence potentiate MDM 2i-induced p53 activation.
Abstract: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a typically lethal molecularly heterogeneous disease, with few broad-spectrum therapeutic targets. Unusually, most AML retain wild-type TP53, encoding the pro-apoptotic tumor suppressor p53. MDM2 inhibitors (MDM2i), which activate wild-type p53, and BET inhibitors (BETi), targeting the BET-family co-activator BRD4, both show encouraging pre-clinical activity, but limited clinical activity as single agents. Here, we report enhanced toxicity of combined MDM2i and BETi towards AML cell lines, primary human blasts and mouse models, resulting from BETi’s ability to evict an unexpected repressive form of BRD4 from p53 target genes, and hence potentiate MDM2i-induced p53 activation. These results indicate that wild-type TP53 and a transcriptional repressor function of BRD4 together represent a potential broad-spectrum synthetic therapeutic vulnerability for AML.
29 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors showed that simultaneous inhibition of the histone methyltransferases G9A and EZH2 activates the CXCL10-CXCR3 axis and increases homing of intratumoral effector lymphocytes and natural killer cells whilst suppressing tumour-promoting FoxP3+ CD4 T cells.
Abstract: Ovarian high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC) prognosis correlates directly with presence of intratumoral lymphocytes. However, cancer immunotherapy has yet to achieve meaningful survival benefit in patients with HGSC. Epigenetic silencing of immunostimulatory genes is implicated in immune evasion in HGSC and re-expression of these genes could promote tumour immune clearance. We discovered that simultaneous inhibition of the histone methyltransferases G9A and EZH2 activates the CXCL10-CXCR3 axis and increases homing of intratumoral effector lymphocytes and natural killer cells whilst suppressing tumour-promoting FoxP3+ CD4 T cells. The dual G9A/EZH2 inhibitor HKMTI-1-005 induced chromatin changes that resulted in the transcriptional activation of immunostimulatory gene networks, including the re-expression of elements of the ERV-K endogenous retroviral family. Importantly, treatment with HKMTI-1-005 improved the survival of mice bearing Trp53-/-null ID8 ovarian tumours and resulted in tumour burden reduction. These results indicate that inhibiting G9A and EZH2 in ovarian cancer alters the immune microenvironment and reduces tumour growth and therefore positions dual inhibition of G9A/EZH2 as a strategy for clinical development. O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=139 SRC="FIGDIR/small/443282v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (36K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@df3617org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@58424dorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@68f463org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@84ab7d_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG
1 citations