Werner syndrome helicase is a selective vulnerability of microsatellite instability-high tumor cells.

Abstract

Targeted cancer therapy is based on exploiting selective dependencies of tumor cells. By leveraging recent functional screening data of cancer cell lines we identify Werner syndrome helicase (WRN) as a novel specific vulnerability of microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) cancer cells. MSI, caused by defective mismatch repair (MMR), occurs frequently in colorectal, endometrial and gastric cancers. We demonstrate that WRN inactivation selectively impairs the viability of MSI-H but not microsatellite stable (MSS) colorectal and endometrial cancer cell lines. In MSI-H cells, WRN loss results in severe genome integrity defects. ATP-binding deficient variants of WRN fail to rescue the viability phenotype of WRN-depleted MSI-H cancer cells. Reconstitution and depletion studies indicate that WRN dependence is not attributable to acute loss of MMR gene function but might arise during sustained MMR-deficiency. Our study suggests that pharmacological inhibition of WRN helicase function represents an opportunity to develop a novel targeted therapy for MSI-H cancers.

• Authors: Simone Lieb, Silvia Blaha-Ostermann, Elisabeth Kamper, Janine Rippka, Cornelia Schwarz, Katharina Ehrenhöfer-Wölfer, Andreas Schlattl, Andreas Wernitznig, Jesse J Lipp, Kota Nagasaka, Petra van der Lelij, Gerd Bader, Minoru Koi, Ajay Goel, Ralph A Neumüller, Jan-Michael Peters, Norbert Kraut, Mark A Pearson, Mark Petronczki, Simon Wöhrle
• Journal: eLife (Elife) Vol. 8 (03 25 2019) ISSN: 2050-084X [Electronic] England
• PMID: 30910006 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)
• Copyright: © 2019, Lieb et al.

Chemical References

• Werner Syndrome Helicase

Topics

• Cell Line, Tumor
• Cell Survival
• DNA Mismatch Repair
• Humans
• Microsatellite Instability
• Models, Theoretical
• Neoplasms (therapy)
• Werner Syndrome Helicase (antagonists & inhibitors, genetics)