eprintid: 10106639 rev_number: 14 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/10/66/39 datestamp: 2020-08-07 15:29:05 lastmod: 2021-10-05 00:45:16 status_changed: 2020-08-07 15:29:05 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Ahmed, AA creators_name: Marchetti, C creators_name: Ohnmacht, SA creators_name: Neidle, S title: A G-quadruplex-binding compound shows potent activity in human gemcitabine-resistant pancreatic cancer cells ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B02 divisions: C08 divisions: D10 keywords: Cancer, Chemical biology, Drug discovery note: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. abstract: Gemcitabine is a drug of choice in the treatment of human pancreatic cancer. Chemo-resistance to this drug is common and has been attributed to a variety of distinct mechanisms, involving > 100 genes. A recently developed small-molecule G-quadruplex ligand, the trisubstituted naphthalene diimide compound CM03, has previously been shown to have equivalent potency to gemcitabine in the pancreatic cancer cell line MIA PaCa-2. We report here on cell lines of increased resistance to gemcitabine that have been generated from this line, with the most resistant having 1,000-fold reduced sensitivity to gemcitabine. These resistant lines retain nM sensitivity to CM03. The molecular basis for the retention of potency by this G-quadruplex ligand has been examined using whole transcriptome data analysis with RNA-seq. This has revealed that the pattern of pathways down regulated by CM03 in the parental MIA PaCa-2 cell line is largely unaffected in the gemcitabine-resistant line. The analysis has also shown that the expression patterns of numerous genes involved in gemcitabine sensitivity are down regulated in the resistant line upon CM03 treatment. These results are supportive of the concept that G-quadruplex small molecules such as CM03 have potential for clinical use in the treatment of gemcitabine-resistant human pancreatic cancer. date: 2020-07-22 date_type: published official_url: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68944-w oa_status: green full_text_type: pub pmcid: PMC7376204 language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1800636 doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-68944-w pii: 10.1038/s41598-020-68944-w lyricists_name: Neidle, Stephen lyricists_id: SNEID18 actors_name: Wong, Ian actors_name: Harris, Jean actors_id: ICKWO00 actors_id: JAHAR68 actors_role: owner actors_role: impersonator full_text_status: public publication: Scientific Reports volume: 10 article_number: 12192 event_location: England citation: Ahmed, AA; Marchetti, C; Ohnmacht, SA; Neidle, S; (2020) A G-quadruplex-binding compound shows potent activity in human gemcitabine-resistant pancreatic cancer cells. Scientific Reports , 10 , Article 12192. 10.1038/s41598-020-68944-w <https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68944-w>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10106639/1/s41598-020-68944-w.pdf