Molecular approaches to overcome intrinsic drug resistance in BRAF and NRAS-mutan

描述（由申请人提供）：申请人是Wistar研究所分子和细胞肿瘤发生项目的助理教授。她的总体目标是为黑色素瘤开发有效和持久的治疗策略。该提案通过研究BRAF-V600E和NRAS突变型黑色素瘤对靶向治疗的内在耐药机制，为申请人改善黑色素瘤患者预后的长期目标服务。候选人将在培养研究利基和成为一名独立的学术癌症研究人员所必需的研究领域进行培训。一个由资深科学顾问组成的团队将正式指导申请人，提供新的研究领域的培训和专业知识，包括蛋白质组学、系统和计算生物学以及自噬。指导团队致力于支持申请人发展成为一名获得全额资助的独立科学家。黑色素瘤是一种侵袭性很强的疾病，治疗方法有限。尽管BRAF抑制剂在治疗黑色素瘤方面取得了成功，但反应是短暂的，大多数患者会产生耐药性。因此，了解、克服和预防耐药性是一项重大挑战。本应用程序旨在研究内在耐药性的机制，这是影响大量黑色素瘤患者的重要未满足的医疗需求，对这些患者没有有效的治疗方法。该建议侧重于对BRAF抑制剂具有内在抗性的NRAS突变型黑素瘤和BRAF- v6000e突变型黑素瘤。总的假设是，揭示黑色素瘤内在耐药性的机制将有助于设计更有效、更持久的治疗方法。申请人假设BRAF的抑制诱导了系统信号网络的重新布线，导致受体酪氨酸激酶（RTK）激活和对BRAF的依赖性减弱。为了验证这一假设，将在BRAF抑制后，在免疫功能低下小鼠（患者来源的异种移植物；PDX）中生长的黑色素瘤细胞系和患者来源的肿瘤样本中评估RTKs的表达和激活。机制研究将进行，以确定如何抑制MAPK导致RTK激活。基于这些研究，合理的药物联合策略将在黑色素瘤细胞生长为三维肿瘤球体和PDX模型中进行评估。第二个可行的假设是，通过鉴定关键的下游NRAS效应物，可以靶向NRAS突变的黑色素瘤。目的是确定在这种致癌基因突变的黑色素瘤细胞中沉默NRAS的生化和生物学后果。为了实现这一目标，将采用一种候选的、无偏倚的基于蛋白质组学的方法来鉴定对NRAS突变黑色素瘤存活至关重要的NRAS效应物。总的来说，这些知识对于开发消除几乎所有黑色素瘤细胞的新策略以及为未来临床试验的设计提供信息至关重要。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The applicant is an assistant professor at Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at the Wistar Institute. Her overall goal is to develop effective and long-lasting treatment strategies for melanoma. This proposal serves the applicant's long-term objective of improving outcomes for melanoma patients by investigating the mechanisms of intrinsic resistance to targeted therapy in BRAF-V600E and NRAS mutant melanomas. The candidate will pursue training in research areas that are essential to foster a research niche and become an independent academic cancer researcher. A team of senior scientific advisors has been assembled to formally mentor the applicant by providing training and expertise in new research areas including proteomics, systems and computational biology, and autophagy. The mentoring team is committed to support the development of the applicant into a fully funded independent scientist. Melanoma is a highly aggressive disease with limited therapeutic options. Despite the success of BRAF inhibitors for the treatment of melanoma, responses are transient and most patients develop resistance. Therefore, a major challenge is to understand, overcome, and prevent drug resistance. This application proposes to investigate the mechanisms of intrinsic drug resistance, an important unmet medical need affecting a large subset of melanoma patients, for whom no effective therapies are available. The proposal focuses on NRAS mutant melanomas and BRAF-V6000E mutant melanomas that are intrinsically resistant to BRAF inhibitors. The overall hypothesis is that uncovering the mechanisms underlying intrinsic drug resistance in melanoma will allow designing more effective and longer lasting therapies. The applicant postulates that inhibition of BRAF induces rewiring of the system's signaling networks leading to receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) activation and attenuated dependency on BRAF. To test this hypothesis, the expression and activation of RTKs will be evaluated in melanoma cell lines and patient-derived tumor samples grown in immunocompromised mice (patient-derived xenografts; PDX) following BRAF inhibition. Mechanistic studies will be performed to determine how inhibition of MAPK leads to RTK activation. Based on these studies rational drug combination strategies will be evaluated in melanoma cells grown as 3D tumor spheroids and in PDX models. The second working hypothesis is that by identifying critical downstream NRAS effectors, melanomas harboring mutations in NRAS can be targeted. The objective is to define the biochemical and biological consequences of silencing NRAS in melanoma cells that harbor mutations in this oncogene. To achieve this goal a candidate and an unbiased proteomic based approaches will be undertaken to identify NRAS effectors that are essential for survival of NRAS mutant melanomas. Collectively, this knowledge will be critical to develop new strategies that eliminate nearly all melanoma cells and inform the design of future clinical trials.