Genome-scale CRISPR/Cas9 screen determines factors modulating sensitivity to ProTide NUC-1031
Abstract
Gemcitabine is a fluoropyrimidine analogue that is used as a mainstay of chemotherapy treatment for pancreatic and ovarian cancers, amongst others. Despite its widespread use, gemcitabine achieves responses in less than 10% of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer and has a very limited impact on overall survival due to intrinsic and acquired resistance. NUC-1031 (Acelarin), a phosphoramidate transformation of gemcitabine, was the first anti-cancer ProTide to enter the clinic. We find it displays important in vitro cytotoxicity differences to gemcitabine, and a genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 genetic screening approach identified only the pyrimidine metabolism pathway as modifying cancer cell sensitivity to NUC-1031. Low deoxycytidine kinase expression in tumour biopsies from patients treated with gemcitabine, assessed by immunostaining and image analysis, correlates with a poor prognosis, but there is no such correlation in tumour biopsies from a Phase I cohort treated with NUC-1031.
Citation
Sarr , A , Bré , J , Um , I H , Chan , T H , Mullen , P , Harrison , D J & Reynolds , P A 2019 , ' Genome-scale CRISPR/Cas9 screen determines factors modulating sensitivity to ProTide NUC-1031 ' , Scientific Reports , vol. 9 , 7643 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44089-3
Publication
Scientific Reports
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2045-2322Type
Journal article
Description
A.S. is the recipient of a Medical Research Scotland PhD Studentship awarded to P.A.R. Edinburgh Genomics is partly supported through core grants from Natural Environment Research Council (R8/H10/56), Medical Research Council (MR/K001744/1) and Biotechnological and Biological Research Council (BB/J004243/1). Publication of this article was funded in part by the University of St Andrews Open Access Publishing Fund.Collections
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