Abstract 1289: The synthetic peptide CIGB-300 inhibits nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) affecting the survival and chemoresistance of human lung cancer cells
Authors: Cirigliano Stéfano M. , Díaz Bessone María Inés , Flumian Carolina , Berardi Damián E. , Perea Silvio , Bal De Kier Joffé Elisa , Farina Hernán , Todaro Laura , Urtreger Alejandro 
Published: July 2016

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide and despite significant progress, current therapies are limited in efficacy. The CK2 Ser/Thr kinase has been historically linked with cancer. It is involved in cell proliferation, survival and apoptosis by modulating diverse signaling pathways, including Wnt and NF-κB among the most relevant.

CIGB-300 is an antitumor peptide with a novel mechanism of action, capable of binding to CK2 substrates thus preventing the enzyme activity. Previously, we have determined that CIGB-300 induces apoptosis through caspase-3 activation in different lung cancer cell lines. Moreover, CIGB-300 strongly inhibited RelA/NF-κB (p65) nuclear translocation, even in the presence of a phorbol-ester activating stimulus.

NF-κB activation is known to reduce chemotherapy efficiency in different malignancies, including lung cancer. Based on this evidence, we hypothesize that supplementing cisplatin with CIGB-300 would improve the treatment efficiency.

Indeed, we observed by Western blot that nuclear p65 levels were highly increased after treating human NCI-H125 cells with cisplatin. Moreover, when cells were treated with cisplatin plus CIGB-300, NF-κB activation was completely abolished. Therefore, the CIGB-300 effect on NF-κB signaling pathway prevails over cisplatin.

These promising results on NF-κB inhibition led us to evaluate the combined treatment in chemoresistant setting. For this purpose we developed a cisplatin resistant A549 lung cancer cell line (A549-Rcisp) by the chronic administration of cisplatin during six months. A549-Rcisp viability was 40% higher than parental cells, confirming the cisplatin-acquired resistance. Remarkably, cisplatin resistant cells showed a significant increase in CIGB-300 sensitivity as compared to the parental cell line (p&lt;0.01; Student's t-test). More on, only A549-Rcisp showed an increased p65 nuclear level after cisplatin treatment, suggesting that both cisplatin resistance and CIGB-300 sensitization might be linked to the NF-kB transcription factor.

Given that NF-κB dimer stability is regulated by the proteasome-selective proteolysis of its inhibitory proteins, we studied the effect of CIGB-300 on this process. Surprisingly, we observed a significant increase on protease activities associated with the proteasome after 30 minutes of CIGB-300 treatment. Thus, proteasome complex is a newly identified target of CIGB-300 that could be relevant for its mechanism of action and deserves further exploration in order to determine the association with the observed perturbation of different signaling pathways.

Citation Format: Stéfano M. Cirigliano, María Inés Díaz Bessone, Carolina Flumian, Damián E. Berardi, Silvio Perea, Elisa Bal De Kier Joffé, Hernán Farina, Laura Todaro, Alejandro Urtreger. The synthetic peptide CIGB-300 inhibits nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) affecting the survival and chemoresistance of human lung cancer cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 1289.