Abstract P5-08-10: TBK1 inhibition potentiates the efficacy of AXL-targeted therapy in aggressive breast cancer preclinical models
Authors: Phi Lan , Semba Takashi , Foulks Jason , Warner Steven , Bearss David , Krishnamurthy Savitri , Long James , Reuben James , Tripathy Debu , Ueno Naoto , Wang Xiaoping 
Published: March 2022

Background: Novel mechanism-oriented targeted therapies are needed for aggressive breast cancers such as triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and inflammatory breast cancer (IBC). We previously showed the oncogenic receptor tyrosine kinase AXL crucially contributes to the aggressiveness of TNBC and TN-IBC, which suggests that AXL is a potential therapeutic target. However, AXL-targeted therapy is insufficient to control the progress of aggressive breast cancer in preclinical models. Therefore, to further enhance the efficacy of AXL-targeted therapy in aggressive breast cancer, we conducted a synthetic lethality screen of pooled kinome siRNA and identified TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1) as a potential target. TBK1 is a necessary serine/threonine protein kinase that regulates innate and adaptive immune responses, T cell migration, and anti-tumor immune responses. In the present work, we validated that AXL and TBK1 inhibition have a synergistic anti-tumor effect by modulating the tumor microenvironment (TME). Methods: To determine the synergistic effect of AXL and TBK1 inhibition on cell proliferation and colony formation in vitro, we first used siRNA-mediated knockdown (KD) or CRISPR/Cas9 knockout (KO) to independently silence AXL and TBK1 expression. We also used pharmacological inhibitors to inactivate AXL and TBK1 signaling and conducted similar studies. To determine the effect of targeting TBK1 and AXL pathways in vivo, we injected control or TBK1 KO murine 4T1.2 TNBC cells into BALB/c mice and assessed the efficacy of the AXL inhibitor TP-0903 in reducing the tumor growth. We used multicolor flow cytometry and multiplexed immunostaining to examine the population of TME components in control and TBK1 KO 4T1.2 tumors treated with vehicle or TP-0903. We also used an in vitro migration assay to test the effect of targeting AXL and TBK1 on the recruitment of CD8+ T cells. We performed a mouse chemokine array to identify intratumoral chemokines involved in regulating infiltrating immune cells and used RT-PCR to validate these findings. Results: Compared with AXL or TBK1 suppression alone, the genomic or pharmacological suppression of both AXL and TBK1 resulted in a significantly greater reduction of TNBC and TN-IBC cell growth and colony-forming ability (P &lt; 0.01). In our syngeneic 4T1.2 TNBC mouse tumor model, TP-0903 was more effective at controlling tumor growth from TBK1-KO cells than from control cells (P &lt; 0.0005). TBK1-KO 4T1.2 tumors treated with TP-0903 had a significantly higher population of functional cytotoxic T cells (GranzymeB+CD3+CD8+) than control KO tumors treated with vehicle or TP-0903. Furthermore, our migration assay showed that TBK1-KO/AXL-KD SUM149 cell-conditioned media attracted more CD8+ T cells than control cell-conditioned media, suggesting the inhibition of AXL/TBK1 signaling enhances the recruitment of CD8+ T cells through a paracrine effect. Our chemokine array revealed increased CXCL16 levels in TP-0903-treated TBK1-KO tumors. Conclusion: Targeting TBK1 could enhance the sensitivity of aggressive breast cancer cells to AXL-targeted therapy in vitro and in vivo. Our preliminary TME data suggest that combined AXL and TBK1 inhibition enhances the anti-tumor immune environment by upregulating secretion of CXCL16 by tumor cells, resulting in the increased recruitment of cytotoxic CD8+ T cells. In future studies, we will further elucidate the role that CXCL16 upregulation plays in this novel synergy. Significance of this findings: This study will enable us to develop hypothesis-driven novel combination therapies for patients with aggressive breast cancer that can be rapidly tested as a clinical trial, leading to an improvement of treatment and patients’ outcome.

Citation Format: Lan Phi, Takashi Semba, Jason Foulks, Steven Warner, David Bearss, Savitri Krishnamurthy, James Long, James Reuben, Debu Tripathy, Naoto Ueno, Xiaoping Wang. TBK1 inhibition potentiates the efficacy of AXL-targeted therapy in aggressive breast cancer preclinical models [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2021 Dec 7-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P5-08-10.