Abstract 1685: Overcoming acquired resistance to PROTAC degraders
Authors: He Tongchen , Cheng Caleb , Parolia Abhijit , Hopkins Alex , Qiao Yuanyuan , Xiao Lanbo , Chinnaiyan Arul 
Published: April 2023

Background: Proteolysis-targeting chimera (PROTAC) technology has been widely investigated for cancer treatment and there have been several PROTAC degrader-based drugs used for clinical trials in the past few years. PROTAC degraders are able to target crucial proteins traditionally thought to be “undruggable”, such as transcriptional factors. Hence, there is increasing interest in these drugs due to their highly efficacy and low off-target toxicity. However, upon further investigation, it has been found that after a period of treatment with PROTAC degraders, cancer cells can acquire resistance to these compounds. Thus, it is of increasing importance to figure out the mechanisms of the resistance and to overcome the acquired resistance to these PROTAC degraders. In our study, we classified resistance mechanisms of prostate cancer cells to PROTAC degraders into two classes and identified factors that can induce them to preferentially develop specific resistance mechanisms.

Methods and Results: AU-15330 is a PROTAC that specifically degrades the subunits (BRG1, PBRM1, BRM) of SWI/SNF complex. We treated 22rv1, a prostate cancer cell line, with different AU-15330 concentrations over a month to establish AU-15330-resistant cell lines. Whole exome sequencing (WES) analysis of these resistant cell lines found that the resistant cell lines that were developed through high-dose (1uM) AU-15330 treatment acquired multiple point mutations within or adjacent to the AU-15330 targeting bromodomain of BRG1. However, BRG1 point mutations were absent in the resistant cell lines that developed through lower concentration of AU-15330 treatment (100nM). Instead, RNA-seq analysis revealed that ABCB1 (also known as Multidrug Resistance Protein 1) expression was upregulated in cells that developed resistance to AU-15330 at 100nM. This was further confirmed by Western blot and qPCR. Next, we overexpressed ABCB1 in LNCaP and 22RV1, and found that overexpression of ABCB1 indeed made prostate cancer cells resistant to AU15330. In addition, we tested with several different potent PROTAC degraders (ARD616, ZBC260, etc) in ABCB1-expressing AU-15530 resistant cells, and found the ABCB1 expression drove the cells to become resistant to all tested PROATC degraders compared to the parental cells. Lastly, we demonstrated that Zosuquidar, an ABCB1 inhibitor, can overcome the ABCB1-mediated resistance to AU-15330 and other PROTAC degraders, suggesting that inhibiting ABCB1 might be a direct and effective strategy to restore PROTAC degrader’s potency when ABCB1-mediated drug resistance is developed.

Conclusion: Our study found that the mechanisms of resistance of PROTAC degraders can vary and may be dependent on drug concentrations. Such concepts may inform future clinical decision-making regarding drug dosing.

Citation Format: Tongchen He, Caleb Cheng, Abhijit Parolia, Alex Hopkins, Yuanyuan Qiao, Lanbo Xiao, Arul Chinnaiyan. Overcoming acquired resistance to PROTAC degraders [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 1685.