2. Academic Validation
  3. A Kinase Inhibitor Targeted to mTORC1 Drives Regression in Glioblastoma

A Kinase Inhibitor Targeted to mTORC1 Drives Regression in Glioblastoma

  • Cancer Cell. 2017 Mar 13;31(3):424-435. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2017.01.014.
QiWen Fan 1,  Ozlem Aksoy 1,  Robyn A Wong 1,  Shirin Ilkhanizadeh 1,  Chris J Novotny 2,  William C Gustafson 3,  Albert Yi-Que Truong 4,  Geraldine Cayanan 1,  Erin F Simonds 1,  Daphne Haas-Kogan 5,  Joanna J Phillips 6,  Theodore Nicolaides 4,  Masanori Okaniwa 2,  Kevan M Shokat 2,  William A Weiss 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
  • 2 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
  • 3 Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
  • 4 Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
  • 5 Department of Radiation Oncology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
  • 6 Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
  • 7 Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA. Electronic address: waweiss@gmail.com.
PMID: 28292440 DOI: 10.1016/j.ccell.2017.01.014
Abstract

Although signaling from phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) and Akt to mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) is prominently dysregulated in high-grade glial brain tumors, blockade of PI3K or Akt minimally affects downstream mTOR activity in glioma. Allosteric mTOR inhibitors, such as rapamycin, incompletely block mTORC1 compared with mTOR kinase inhibitors (TORKi). Here, we compared RapaLink-1, a TORKi linked to rapamycin, with earlier-generation mTOR inhibitors. Compared with rapamycin and Rapalink-1, TORKi showed poor durability. RapaLink-1 associated with FKBP12, an abundant mTOR-interacting protein, enabling accumulation of RapaLink-1. RapaLink-1 showed better efficacy than rapamycin or TORKi, potently blocking cancer-derived, activating mutants of mTOR. Our study re-establishes mTOR as a central target in glioma and traces the failure of existing drugs to incomplete/nondurable inhibition of mTORC1.

Keywords

FKBP12, FK506 binding protein 12; FRB, FK506 rapamycin binding; GBM, glioblastoma; PI3K, phosphatidylinositol 3' kinase; TORKi, mTOR kinase inhibitor; mTOR mechanistic target of rapamycin; mTORC1, mTOR complex 1; mTORC2, mTOR complex 2.

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