Engineered targeting OIP5 sensitizes bladder cancer to chemotherapy resistance via TRIP12-PPP1CB-YBX1 axis

Abstract

Chemoresistance is an important cause of treatment failure in bladder cancer, and identifying genes that confer drug resistance is an important step toward developing new therapeutic strategies to improve treatment outcomes. In the present study, we show that gemcitabine plus cisplatin (GEM/DDP) therapy induces NF-κB signaling, which promotes p65-mediated transcriptional activation of OIP5. OIP5 recruits the E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIP12 to bind to and degrade the phosphatase PPP1CB, thereby enhancing the transcription factor activity of YBX1. This in turn upregulates drug-resistance-related genes under the transcriptional control of YBX1, leading to chemoresistance. Moreover, PPP1CB degradation can enhance the phosphorylation activity of IKKβ, triggering the NF-κB signaling cascade, which further stimulates OIP5 gene expression, thus forming a negative feedback regulatory loop. Consistently, elevated OIP5 expression was associated with chemoresistance and poor prognosis in patients with bladder cancer. Furthermore, we used a CRISPR/Cas9-based engineered gene circuit, which can monitor the progression of chemoresistance in real-time, to induce OIP5 knockout upon detection of increased NF-κB signaling. The gene circuit significantly inhibited tumor cell growth in vivo, underscoring the potential for synergy between gene therapy and chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer.