Engineering ABT-737 Resistance in MYC-driven Lymphomas Identifies DHX9 as a Drug Response Modifier

Many traditional cytotoxic agents used in the treatment of cancer function by eliciting an apoptotic response in tumor cells. However, evasion of apoptosis by BCL-2 family members is often deregulated prior to therapeutic intervention leading to treatment failure. To address this, ABT-737 was rationally designed to target BCL-2-like family members and has shown promising results against tumor cells dependent on BCL-2 for their survival. One shortcoming is that MCL-1, a member of the BCL-2 family is poorly inhibited by ABT-737 and is a major cause of resistance. To gain insight into biological pathways that could circumvent this resistance, we designed an shRNA screen to identify novel sensitizers to ABT-737 by engineering MYC driven lymphomas that were resistant to ABT-737 due to endogenous MCL-1 expression. Utilizing this model, we performed a shRNA drop-out screen and identified Dhx9 as a target whose suppression sensitizes cells to ABT-737. DHX9 loss lead to replicative stress signaling, which in turn potently induced the BH3-only proteins, NOXA and PUMA, in a p53-dependent manner to curtail MCL-1 activity. Induction of NOXA is essential for ABT-737 sensitization. Our results ascribe a novel role for DHX9 in the replicative stress pathway and link DHX9 activity to p53 function in vivo.

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Mills JR, Malina A, Lee T, Di Paola D, Larsson O, Miething C, Grosse F, Tang H, Zannis-Hadjopoulos M, Lowe SW, Pelletier J