DiSCoVERing Innovative Therapies for Rare Tumors: Combining Genetically Accurate Disease Models with In Silico Analysis to Identify Novel Therapeutic Targets.

Clin Cancer Res
Authors
Abstract

PURPOSE: We used human stem and progenitor cells to develop a genetically accurate novel model of MYC-driven Group 3 medulloblastoma. We also developed a new informatics method, Disease-model Signature versus Compound-Variety Enriched Response ("DiSCoVER"), to identify novel therapeutics that target this specific disease subtype.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Human neural stem and progenitor cells derived from the cerebellar anlage were transduced with oncogenic elements associated with aggressive medulloblastoma. An in silico analysis method for screening drug sensitivity databases (DiSCoVER) was used in multiple drug sensitivity datasets. We validated the top hits from this analysis in vitro and in vivo

RESULTS: Human neural stem and progenitor cells transformed with c-MYC, dominant-negative p53, constitutively active AKT and hTERT formed tumors in mice that recapitulated Group 3 medulloblastoma in terms of pathology and expression profile. DiSCoVER analysis predicted that aggressive MYC-driven Group 3 medulloblastoma would be sensitive to cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitors. The CDK 4/6 inhibitor palbociclib decreased proliferation, increased apoptosis, and significantly extended the survival of mice with orthotopic medulloblastoma xenografts.

CONCLUSIONS: We present a new method to generate genetically accurate models of rare tumors, and a companion computational methodology to find therapeutic interventions that target them. We validated our human neural stem cell model of MYC-driven Group 3 medulloblastoma and showed that CDK 4/6 inhibitors are active against this subgroup. Our results suggest that palbociclib is a potential effective treatment for poor prognosis MYC-driven Group 3 medulloblastoma tumors in carefully selected patients. Clin Cancer Res; 22(15); 3903-14. ©2016 AACR.

Year of Publication
2016
Journal
Clin Cancer Res
Volume
22
Issue
15
Pages
3903-14
Date Published
2016 Aug 01
ISSN
1078-0432
DOI
10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-15-3011
PubMed ID
27012813
PubMed Central ID
PMC5055054
Links
Grant list
R01 GM074024 / GM / NIGMS NIH HHS / United States
U01 CA176152 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
R01 NS055089 / NS / NINDS NIH HHS / United States
P30 CA006973 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
U24 CA194107 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
P30 CA023100 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
R01 CA154480 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States