Aimee Landar

Despite advances in screening and treatment over the past several years, breast cancer remains a leading cause of cancer-related death among women in the United States. A major goal in breast cancer treatment is to develop safe and clinically useful therapeutic agents that will prevent the recurrence of breast cancers after front-line therapeutics have failed. Ideally, these agents would have relatively low toxicity against normal cells, and will specifically inhibit the growth and proliferation of cancer cells. Our group and others have previously demonstrated that breast cancer cells exhibit increased mitochondrial oxygen consumption compared with non-tumorigenic breast epithelial cells. This suggests that it may be possible to deliver redox active compounds to the mitochondria to selectively inhibit cancer cell metabolism. To demonstrate proof-of-principle, a series of mitochondria-targeted soft electrophiles (MTSEs) has been designed which selectively accumulate within the mitochondria of highly energetic breast cancer cells and modify mitochondrial proteins. A prototype MTSE, IBTP, significantly inhibits mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, resulting in decreased breast cancer cell proliferation, cell attachment, and migration in vitro. These results suggest MTSEs may represent a novel class of anti-cancer agents that prevent cancer cell growth by modification of specific mitochondrial proteins.

Cancer cells tend to utilize aerobic glycolysis even under normoxic conditions, commonly called the “Warburg effect.” Aerobic glycolysis often directly correlates with malignancy, but its purpose, if any, in metastasis remains unclear. When wild-type KISS1 metastasis suppressor is expressed, aerobic glycolysis decreases and oxidative phosphorylation predominates. However, when KISS1 is missing the secretion signal peptide (ΔSS), invasion and metastasis are no longer suppressed and cells continue to metabolize using aerobic glycolysis. KISS1-expressing cells have 30% to 50% more mitochondrial mass than ΔSS-expressing cells, which are accompanied by correspondingly increased mitochondrial gene expression and higher expression of PGC1α, a master coactivator that regulates mitochondrial mass and metabolism. PGC1α-mediated downstream pathways (i.e., fatty acid synthesis and β-oxidation) are differentially regulated by KISS1, apparently reliant upon direct KISS1 interaction with NRF1, a major transcription factor involved in mitochondrial biogenesis. Since the downstream effects could be reversed using short hairpin RNA to KISS1 or PGC1α, these data appear to directly connect changes in mitochondria mass, cellular glucose metabolism, and metastasis. Cancer Res; 74(3); 954–63. ©2013 AACR.

Mitochondria are both a source and target of the actions of reactive oxygen species and possess a complex system of inter-related antioxidants that control redox signaling and protect against oxidative stress. Interestingly, the antioxidant enzyme heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is not present in the mitochondria despite the fact that the organelle is the site of heme synthesis and contains multiple heme proteins. Detoxification of heme is an important protective mechanism since the reaction of heme with hydrogen peroxide generates pro-oxidant ferryl species capable of propagating oxidative stress and ultimately cell death. We therefore hypothesized that a mitochondrially localized HO-1 would be cytoprotective. To test this, we generated a mitochondria-targeted HO-1 cell line by transfecting HEK293 cells with a plasmid construct containing the manganese superoxide dismutase mitochondria leader sequence fused to HO-1 cDNA (Mito-HO-1). Nontargeted HO-1-overexpressing cells were generated by transfecting HO-1 cDNA (HO-1) or empty vector (Vector). Mitochondrial localization of HO-1 with increased HO activity in the mitochondrial fraction of Mito-HO-1 cells was observed, but a significant decrease in the expression of heme-containing proteins occurred in these cells. Both cytosolic HO-1- and Mito-HO-1-expressing cells were protected against hypoxia-dependent cell death and loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, but these effects were more pronounced with Mito-HO-1. Furthermore, decrement in production of tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates following hypoxia was significantly mitigated in Mito-HO-1 cells. These data suggest that specific mitochondrially targeted HO-1 under acute pathological conditions may have beneficial effects, but the selective advantage of long-term expression is constrained by a negative impact on the synthesis of heme-containing mitochondrial proteins.