Pipeline to evaluate YAP-TEAD inhibitors indicates TEAD inhibition represses NF2-mutant mesothelioma

As the core, tumorigenic downstream effectors of the Hippo signalling pathway, YAP/TAZ and the TEAD family of transcription factors represent attractive targets for drug discovery efforts within cancer research. This is particularly true in the context of pleural mesothelioma, in which there are many recent preclinical developments and clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of TEAD inhibitors. The range of inhibitors has shown great promise, but comparisons of their performances are so far limited. Here, we develop a high-content pipeline that enables a comparative analysis of currently developed YAP/TAZ-TEAD inhibitors. We take advantage of isogenic cellular models that enable us to examine inhibitor specificity. We identify genetic compensation of the Hippo pathway transcriptional module, with implications for therapeutic targeting, and implement Cell Painting to develop a detailed morphological profiling pipeline that enables further characterisation, quantification, and analysis of off-target effects. Our pipeline is scalable and allows us to establish specificity and comparative potency within cancer-relevant assays in a clinically relevant cellular model of pleural mesothelioma.