Abstract 2600: AsiDNA® treatment protects healthy cells from anticancer treatment toxicity
Authors: Jdey Wael , Sesink Anouk , Cohendet Agathe , Rieu Juliette , Doizelet Chloe , Hayes Vincent , Girard Pierre-Marie , Dutreix Marie , Greciet Judith 
Published: June 2022

Purpose: Conventional cytotoxic therapies are still the standard of care for the treatment of many cancers. However, the associated severe side effects, especially damage to normal proliferating cells like stem and progenitor cells, often lead to drug dose reduction, which limits treatment success. Indeed, chemotherapy-induced myelosuppression is manifested by neutropenia, lymphopenia, anemia, and thrombocytopenia. Although growth factors ameliorate this myelosuppression, their efficacy is still suboptimal and lineage specific. Pre-clinical and clinical studies have shown that AsiDNA, a double-stranded (DS) DNA molecule that mimics DS DNA breaks to interfere with DNA repair by over-activating a false DNA damage signaling through DNA-PK and PARP enzymes (decoy agonist), is extremely well tolerated in standalone in mammals. These observations led us to assess the potential of AsiDNA to protect healthy cells from toxicities of several anti-cancer treatments.

Experimental design: In vivo, we analyzed the safety profile of AsiDNA during a recent clinical trial (DRIIV-1b/NCT03579628) in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy. In vitro, we used isolated blood cells from healthy donors, and epithelial and fibroblast cells as models to study if AsiDNA could protect healthy cells to chemo- and radiotherapy-induced toxicity. We monitored cell survival, DNA damage (comet assays) and repair (53BP1 and Rad51 foci), DNA-PK (HSP90 and H2AX phosphorylation) and PARP (PARylation) activation, cell cycle modulation and p53 dependency to identify mechanisms underlying the effects of AsiDNA on healthy cells.

Results: In vivo, long-term treatment of several patients with carboplatine+/-paclitaxel + AsiDNA showed no increase of chemotherapies toxicities allowing longer periods of disease control and suggesting a protective effect of AsiDNA. In the in vitro models, we showed that AsiDNA enters non dividing and dividing healthy cells as revealed by intracellular PARylation but induces its nuclear target engagement (H2AX and HSP90 phosphorylation) only in dividing cells. Association of AsiDNA to antitumor treatments increased survival of healthy proliferative cells. Interestingly, AsiDNA displayed two distinct mechanisms of protection depending on the origin of the cells: p53-dependent G1/S cell cycle arrest in fibroblasts and epithelial cells, and DNA repair “doping” in hematological cells revealed by higher recruitment of Rad51 and 53BP1 at damage sites in those cells. Enzymatic inhibition and gene editing revealed that hyperactivation of DNA-PK/p53 pathway by AsiDNA might be required for healthy cells preservation.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that the combination of AsiDNA with anticancer treatments should provide a means to attenuate therapy-induced toxicity, while showing the well-documented synergy in tumor cells, thus providing an opportunity to increase the therapeutic window.

Citation Format: Wael Jdey, Anouk Sesink, Agathe Cohendet, Juliette Rieu, Chloe Doizelet, Vincent Hayes, Pierre-Marie Girard, Marie Dutreix, Judith Greciet. AsiDNA® treatment protects healthy cells from anticancer treatment toxicity [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 2600.