Abstract GS3-05: Prospective optimization of estrogen receptor degradation yields ER ligands with variable capacities for ER transcriptional suppression
Authors: Metcalfe C , Zhou W , Guan J , Daemen A , Hafner M , Blake RA , Ingalla E , Young A , Oeh J , De Bruyn T , Ubhayakar S , Chen I , Giltnane JM , Li J , Wang X , Sampath D , Hager JH , Friedman LS 
Published: May 2019

ER+ breast cancers can depend on ER signaling throughout disease progression, including after acquired resistance to existing endocrine agents, providing a rationale for further optimization and development of ER-targeting agents. Fulvestrant is unique amongst currently approved ER ligand therapeutics due to classification as a full ER antagonist, which is thought to be achieved through degradation of ER protein. However, the full clinical potential of fulvestrant is believed to be limited by poor bioavailability, spurring attempts to generate ligands capable of driving ER degradation but with improved drug-like properties.

Here, we evaluate three ER ligand clinical candidates that recently emerged from prospective optimization of ER degradation – GDC-0810, AZD9496 and GDC-0927 - and show that they display distinct mechanistic features. GDC-0810 and AZD9496 are more limited in their ER degradation capacity relative to GDC-0927 and fulvestrant, display evidence of weak transcriptional activation of ER in breast cancer cells (i.e. partial agonist activity), and do not achieve the same degree of in vitro anti-proliferative activity as GDC-0927 and fulvestrant. In the HCI-013 (ER.Y537S) and HCI-011 (ER.WT) ER+ patient-derived xenograft models, GDC-0927 drives greater transcriptional suppression of ER, and greater anti-tumor activity relative to GDC-0810.

We found that despite their full antagonist phenotype, GDC-0927 and fulvestrant promote association of ER with DNA, including at canonical ERE motifs, prior to ER degradation. Interestingly however, integration of ER ChIP-Seq and ATAC-Seq data revealed that ER complexed with fulvestrant or GDC-0927 fails to increase chromatin accessibility at DNA binding sites, in contrast to partial agonists which result in increased chromatin accessibility at ER binding sites. Thus, although ER contacts DNA when engaged with fulvestrant and GDC-0927, it is functionally inert. To further explore mechanistic features that might account for the differential activity of full antagonists and partial agonists that occurs prior to ER degradation, we used cell-based florescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) to measure the kinetics of ER diffusion within the nucleus. We demonstrate that while ER is generally highly mobile, including after engagement with GDC-0810 and AZD9496, GDC-0927 and fulvestrant immobilize intra-nuclear ER. A site saturating mutagenesis screen revealed a series of novel ER mutations that prevent ER immobilization by fulvestrant and GDC-0927. This class of “always mobile” ER variants promotes an antagonist-to-agonist transcriptional switch for fulvestrant and GDC-0927, and simultaneously prevents ER degradation by these molecules, implying that ER immobilization is a key functional determinant of robust transcriptional suppression.

We thus propose that ER degradation is not a driver of full ER antagonism, but rather a downstream consequence of ER immobilization, occurring after a suppressive phenotype has been established at chromatin. We additionally argue that evaluating the transcriptional output of candidate ER therapeutics, both pre-clinically and clinically, will be critical for the identification of ER ligands with best-in-class potential.

Citation Format: Metcalfe C, Zhou W, Guan J, Daemen A, Hafner M, Blake RA, Ingalla E, Young A, Oeh J, De Bruyn T, Ubhayakar S, Chen I, Giltnane JM, Li J, Wang X, Sampath D, Hager JH, Friedman LS. Prospective optimization of estrogen receptor degradation yields ER ligands with variable capacities for ER transcriptional suppression [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2018 Dec 4-8; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(4 Suppl):Abstract nr GS3-05.