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Long-term treatment of cancer-prone germline PTEN mutant mice with low-dose rapamycin extends lifespan and delays tumour development

Tibarewal, Priyanka; Rathbone, Victoria; Constantinou, Georgia; Pearce, Wayne; Adil, Mahreen; Varyova, Zofia; Folkes, Lisa; ... Vanhaesebroeck, Bart; + view all (2022) Long-term treatment of cancer-prone germline PTEN mutant mice with low-dose rapamycin extends lifespan and delays tumour development. The Journal of Pathology 10.1002/path.6009. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

PTEN is one of the most commonly inactivated tumour suppressor genes in sporadic cancer. Germline heterozygous PTEN gene alterations also underlie PTEN hamartoma tumour syndrome (PHTS), a rare human cancer-predisposition condition. A key feature of systemic PTEN deregulation is the inability to adequately dampen PI3-kinase (PI3K)/mTORC1 signalling. PI3K/mTORC1 pathway inhibitors such as rapamycin are therefore expected to neutralise the impact of PTEN loss, rendering this a more druggable context compared with those of other tumour suppressor pathways such as loss of TP53. However, this has not been explored in cancer prevention in a model of germline cancer predisposition, such as PHTS. Clinical trials of short-term treatment with rapamycin have recently been initiated for PHTS, focusing on cognition and colon polyposis. Here, we administered a low dose of rapamycin from the age of 6 weeks onwards to mice with heterozygous germline Pten loss, a mouse model that recapitulates most characteristics of human PHTS. Rapamycin was well tolerated and led to a highly significant improvement of survival in both male and female mice. This was accompanied by a delay in, but not full blockade of, the development of a range of proliferative lesions, including gastro-intestinal and thyroid tumours and endometrial hyperplasia, with no impact on mammary and prostate tumours, and no effect on brain overgrowth. Our data indicate that rapamycin may have cancer prevention potential in human PHTS. This might also be the case for sporadic cancers in which genetic PI3K pathway activation is an early event in tumour development, such as endometrial cancer and some breast cancers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a long-term treatment of a germline cancer predisposition model with a PI3K/mTOR pathway inhibitor. © 2022 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Type: Article
Title: Long-term treatment of cancer-prone germline PTEN mutant mice with low-dose rapamycin extends lifespan and delays tumour development
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1002/path.6009
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1002/path.6009
Language: English
Additional information: © 2022 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: PHTS, PI 3-kinase, PTEN, cancer prevention, drug, hamartoma, kinase inhibitor, mTORC1, rapamycin, rare disease, syndrome
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Cancer Institute > Research Department of Oncology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Cancer Institute
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10158652
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