Repurposed AT9283 triggers anti-tumoral effects by targeting MKK3 oncogenic functions in Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common type of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with a survival rate near to 10% when diagnosed at an advanced stage. Hence, the identification of new molecular targets to design more selective and efficient therapies is urgently required. The Mitogen activated protein kinase kinase 3 (MKK3) is a dual-specificity threonine/tyrosine protein kinase that, activated in response to cellular stress and inflammatory stimuli, regulates a plethora of biological processes. Previous studies revealed novel MKK3 roles in supporting tumor malignancy, as its depletion induces autophagy and cell death in cancer lines of different tumor types, including CRC. Therefore, MKK3 may represent an interesting new therapeutic target in advanced CRC, however selective MKK3 inhibitors are currently not available.

The study involved transcriptomic based drug repurposing approach and confirmatory assays with CRC lines, primary colonocytes and a subset of CRC patient-derived organoids (PDO). Investigations in vitro and in vivo were addressed.

The repurposing approach identified the multitargeted kinase inhibitor AT9283 as a putative compound with MKK3 depletion-mimicking activities. Indeed, AT9283 drops phospho- and total-MKK3 protein levels in tested CRC models. Likely the MKK3 silencing, AT9283 treatment: i) inhibited cell proliferation promoting autophagy and cell death in tested CRC lines and PDOs; ii) resulted well-tolerated by CCD-18Co colonocytes; iii) reduced cancer cell motility inhibiting CRC cell migration and invasion; iv) inhibited COLO205 xenograft tumor growth. Mechanistically, AT9283 abrogated MKK3 protein levels mainly through the inhibition of aurora kinase A (AURKA), impacting on MKK3/AURKA protein-protein interaction and protein stability therefore uncovering the relevance of MKK3/AURKA crosstalk in sustaining CRC malignancy in vitro and in vivo.

Overall, we demonstrated that the anti-tumoral effects triggered by AT9283 treatment recapitulated the MKK3 depletion effects in all tested CRC models in vitro and in vivo, suggesting that AT9283 is a repurposed drug. According to its good tolerance when tested with primary colonocytes (CCD-18CO), AT9283 is a promising drug for the development of novel therapeutic strategies to target MKK3 oncogenic functions in late-stage and metastatic CRC patients.