Abstract C091: Uncovering genetic regulators of metabolic plasticity in renal cell carcinoma
Authors: Holloway Chelsee , Horak Josef , Jeon Youngkyu , Aregger Michael 
Published: September 2024

We aim to offer new insights on the regulation of metabolic plasticity in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and identify novel metabolic regulatory targets that can be used for potential treatment therapies of the disease. RCC affects an estimated 400,000 people worldwide each year with over 100,00 deaths annually that disproportionately affects racial/ethnic minorities in the United States. RCC is a term that covers an array of kidney cancer subtypes differing in incidence, histopathology, genetic and molecular alterations, as well as in clinical outcomes and prognoses. However, a common characteristic of many RCCs is that they are driven by metabolic rewiring, due to a high frequency of mutations in genes that regulate major metabolic processes in the cell. It was recently discovered that patient overall survival and prognosis has been linked to the expression of certain metabolic signatures in RCC tumor cells. Metabolic plasticity allows cancer cells to survive and adapt to different environments and metabolic stress conditions, such as nutrient deprivation. Therefore, exploring and exploiting metabolic rewiring in these cells may reveal genetic vulnerabilities and dependencies. This could lead to discovery of novel biomarkers and molecular targets that can be implicated as future therapeutic interventions for this disease. To this end, we applied functional genomic screening to expose genetic dependencies and vulnerabilities under different physiologic and metabolic conditions in patient derived medullary (PDM) RCC cells. The medullary RCC is a rare and aggressive RCC subtype that disproportionately affects the African American/Black population. We applied a CRISPR- based combinatorial screening platform that is based on co-expression of Cas9 and Cas12a nucleases and libraries of hybrid guide RNAs (hgRNA) to achieve ultra-efficient gene knockout (Aregger et al., 2021; Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis et al., 2020) in PDM RCC cells. Additionally, cells were screened under different media conditions that mimic human physiological nutrient conditions and a media deprived of lipids, one of the major metabolic substrates of the cell. By utilizing a genome-wide pooled CRISPR gene knockout screen we were able to systematically uncover genes required for cell survival and proliferation in a panel of patient-derived RCCs. We have begun to uncover genetic dependencies and major metabolic pathways that can be elucidated and exploited for future studies, such as those involving ferroptosis which is a targetable pathway for the development of cancer treatment therapies. Our findings demonstrate some of the key genetic drivers underlying cellular adaptations to different physiological environments and nutrient deprivation. In future studies we will further explore the relationship between different key metabolic regulatory genes in RCC and map for genetic interactions in major metabolic pathways.

Citation Format: Chelsee Holloway, Josef Horak, Youngkyu Jeon, Michael Aregger. Uncovering genetic regulators of metabolic plasticity in renal cell carcinoma [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2024 Sep 21-24; Los Angeles, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2024;33(9 Suppl):Abstract nr C091.