Wen Mi, Jianwei You, Liucheng Li, Lingzhi Zhu, Xinyi Xia, Li Yang, Fei Li, Yi Xu, Junfeng Bi, Pingyu Liu, Li Chen, Fuming Li
{"title":"BET inhibition induces GDH1-dependent glutamine metabolic remodeling and vulnerability in liver cancer.","authors":"Wen Mi, Jianwei You, Liucheng Li, Lingzhi Zhu, Xinyi Xia, Li Yang, Fei Li, Yi Xu, Junfeng Bi, Pingyu Liu, Li Chen, Fuming Li","doi":"10.1093/lifemeta/loae016","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Bromodomain and extra-terminal domain (BET) proteins, which function partly through MYC proto-oncogene (MYC), are critical epigenetic readers and emerging therapeutic targets in cancer. Whether and how BET inhibition simultaneously induces metabolic remodeling in cancer cells remains unclear. Here we find that even transient BET inhibition by JQ-1 and other pan-BET inhibitors (pan-BETis) blunts liver cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth. BET inhibition decreases glycolytic gene expression but enhances mitochondrial glucose and glutamine oxidative metabolism revealed by metabolomics and isotope labeling analysis. Specifically, BET inhibition downregulates <i>miR-30a</i> to upregulate glutamate dehydrogenase 1 (GDH1) independent of MYC, which produces α-ketoglutarate for mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). Targeting GDH1 or OXPHOS is synthetic lethal to BET inhibition, and combined BET and OXPHOS inhibition therapeutically prevents liver tumor growth <i>in vitro</i> and <i>in vivo</i>. Together, we uncover an important epigenetic-metabolic crosstalk whereby BET inhibition induces MYC-independent and GDH1-dependent glutamine metabolic remodeling that can be exploited for innovative combination therapy of liver cancer.</p>","PeriodicalId":74074,"journal":{"name":"Life metabolism","volume":"3 4","pages":"loae016"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11749653/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Life metabolism","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/lifemeta/loae016","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/8/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Bromodomain and extra-terminal domain (BET) proteins, which function partly through MYC proto-oncogene (MYC), are critical epigenetic readers and emerging therapeutic targets in cancer. Whether and how BET inhibition simultaneously induces metabolic remodeling in cancer cells remains unclear. Here we find that even transient BET inhibition by JQ-1 and other pan-BET inhibitors (pan-BETis) blunts liver cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth. BET inhibition decreases glycolytic gene expression but enhances mitochondrial glucose and glutamine oxidative metabolism revealed by metabolomics and isotope labeling analysis. Specifically, BET inhibition downregulates miR-30a to upregulate glutamate dehydrogenase 1 (GDH1) independent of MYC, which produces α-ketoglutarate for mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). Targeting GDH1 or OXPHOS is synthetic lethal to BET inhibition, and combined BET and OXPHOS inhibition therapeutically prevents liver tumor growth in vitro and in vivo. Together, we uncover an important epigenetic-metabolic crosstalk whereby BET inhibition induces MYC-independent and GDH1-dependent glutamine metabolic remodeling that can be exploited for innovative combination therapy of liver cancer.