Abstract 3079: Characterization of ER-AF2 inhibitors in breast cancer

Abstract

Abstract Up to 80% of breast cancers (BCa) rely on the estrogen receptor (ER) for their growth and progression. This dependence on ER has led to many hormonal therapies that target this receptor. However, almost 40% of these cancers will acquire resistance over the course of the treatment period. One potential cause of resistance is mutations in the estrogen binding site (EBS) of ER. As such, there is an increasing need for novel inhibitors that targets ER at a site separate from the EBS. Here, we propose targeting the activation-function (AF2) pocket of ER that is important for cofactor binding and transcription activation. Billions of compounds were screened through an in-silico deep docking method, and potential AF2 inhibitors were then validated in cell-based and biophysical assays. We tested the effect of potential AF2 inhibitors on ER transcriptional activity using luciferase reporter assay in ER-positive T47D-kbluc cells. We then evaluated the effect of molecules on cell viability of ER-positive T47D and ER-negative MDA-MB-231 cells using PrestoBlue assays in order to exclude off-target effects. From these cell-based assays, we identified several inhibitors that effectively reduced transcriptional activity and viability in ER-positive T47D cells at low micromolar concentrations. We conducted PGC-1α peptide displacement assay to confirm their AF2 binding and estradiol displacement assays to exclude any binding to the EBS. Proximity ligation assay (PLA) showed disruption of the interaction between ER and coactivator SRC-3 upon treatment with ER-AF2 inhibitors in T47D cells. Current work focuses on confirming the direct binding between the compounds and recombinant ER-ligand binding domain by various biophysical assays (MST, BLI, and ITC). Future work aims to solve the structure of ER-LBD in a complex with our lead compound by X-ray crystallography. We predict that the use of potent ER-AF2 inhibitors along with current treatments, will provide a novel tactic that can act as a complementary therapeutic to target treatment resistance in ER+ BCa. Citation Format: Jane Foo, Francesco Gentile, Joseph Lee, Helene Morin, Shabnam Massah, Maria Guo, Jason Smith, Fuqiang Ban, Artem Cherkasov, Nada Lallous. Characterization of ER-AF2 inhibitors in breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 3079.