Abstract A136: A novel, orally bioavailable and selective histone deacetylase (HDAC) 1 & 2 inhibitor enhances retinoic acid mediated differentiation of neuroblastoma
Authors: Tamang David L. , Haung Pengyu , Golonzhka Olga , Shearstone Jeff , Quayle Steven N. , Jones Simon S. , Yang Min 
Published: May 2016

Neuroblastoma (NB) is an extra-cranial solid cancer arising from the neural crest and is among the most common cancers in infants less than 1 year of age (Park, JR et al., 2008). Approximately one child per 100,000 is diagnosed with NB, resulting in 650 new cases each year in the United States. Half of the children with NB have high risk disease and 20-50% of those will fail to respond adequately to current therapies, illustrating a clear unmet medical need. Current treatment for high-risk disease is aggressive, including chemotherapy, surgery, radiation with stem cell transplant, anti-GD2/cytokine immunotherapy and retinoic acid (RA) (Yang, RK et. al., 2010; Cheung, NK et. al., 2012). RA is a pro-differentiation agent that slows growth and promotes cell death. A gene expression pattern associated with RA-induced NB differentiation was identified (Hahn, CK et. al., 2008; Frumm, SM et. al., 2013), and inhibition of HDAC1/2 was shown to induce a similar expression pattern.

In this work, we examine the activity of an orally bioavailable HDAC1/2 inhibitor (HDAC1/2i) on NB cell differentiation, proliferation and apoptosis. RA combined with HDAC1/2i enhances gene expression patterns associated with differentiation, slows cellular proliferation and more rapidly induces dendrite formation than RA can achieve alone. The mechanisms leading to the differentiated phenotype were examined by microarray and retinoic acid receptor (RAR) ChIP-seq. HDAC1/2i and RA together caused increased localization of the RAR to its own RARa and RARß promoter regions, and an increase in mRNA and protein relative to the RA treatment condition alone. Additionally, expression of Cyp26a1/b1, enzymes responsible for clearing intercellular RA, were reduced in the combination setting. Gene set enrichment analysis of the microarray data comparing the combination setting against RA as a single agent suggested that the addition of HDAC1/2i was enhancing apoptotic pathways and decreasing E2F driven cell cycle signaling.

In further experiments, we confirmed enhanced apoptosis in the combination setting by measuring caspase 3 and PARP cleavage, which is consistent with reduced proliferation, increased sub-G1 cell frequency in cell cycle assays and ablation of emergent RA-resistant NB colonies. Further, the E2F-activators, CDK4 and CDK6, were reduced at the protein level in the combination setting while the CDK inhibitor, p21, was dramatically increased. Hypo-phosphorylation of retinoblastoma protein, directly linked to E2F complex inactivation, was also observed and consistent with reduced proliferation and the decreased frequency of S-phase cells observed in EDU incorporation assays. Xenograft models of NB with RA and HDAC1/2i are in progress and will be discussed. Taken together, these findings support a role for selective HDAC1/2i in combination with RA for the treatment of patients with high risk NB.

Citation Format: David L. Tamang, Pengyu Haung, Olga Golonzhka, Jeff Shearstone, Steven N. Quayle, Simon S. Jones, Min Yang. A novel, orally bioavailable and selective histone deacetylase (HDAC) 1 & 2 inhibitor enhances retinoic acid mediated differentiation of neuroblastoma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2015 Nov 5-9; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2015;14(12 Suppl 2):Abstract nr A136.