Demonstration of the efficacy of compound CFAK-C4 targeting FAK-VEGFR3 protein-protein interaction in gastric cancer.

Abstract

e22143 Background: While the emerging data strongly suggest that FAK is an excellent target for developmental therapeutics of cancer, kinase inhibitors of FAK have shown crossreactivity with other protein kinases and toxicity in preclinical and clinical studies. It is known that FAK acts pleiotropically, as a kinase and as a scaffolding protein, and our goal is to explore targeting the scaffolding function of FAK to inhibit protein-protein interactions important for tumor progression. Previously, we have shown that FAK physically interacts with VEGFR3 and we identified small molecule inhibitor CFAK-C4 that targets this site of interaction. Both of these kinases are overexpressed in gastric cancers and were found to be independent poor prognostic factors. The prognosis of patients with gastric cancer remains unfavorable and molecular based treatments are necessary for a potential breakthrough in the therapy of this disease. We hypothesize that FAK-VEGFR3 interaction provides essential survival signals for gastric tumor growth and that simultaneous inhibition of these signals will inhibit tumor progression. Methods: Effects of CFAK-C4 on gastric cancer cell lines AGS and NCI-N87 were examined by MTT assay (viability), colony formation assay and Western blotting (phosphorylation, apoptosis). Subcutaneous mouse model was used to demonstrate effect of CFAK-C4 in vivo. Results: CFAK-C4 specifically blocked phosphorylation of VEGFR3 and FAK, directly inhibited cell viability (p<0.05), increased cell detachment and inhibited colony formation in a dose-dependent manner (range 1-100µM). CFAK-C4 (50mg/kg, IP) effectively caused tumor regression in vivo, when administered alone and its effects were synergistic (p<0.05) with chemotherapy. In vivo effects of C4 were confirmed by a decrease in tumor FAK and VEGFR3 phosphorylation, and disruption of their complexes. Conclusions: In this study we have shown that CFAK-C4 inhibits FAK-VEGFR3 signaling in gastric cancer cells and affects tumor growth. This result demonstrates that targeting the scaffolding function of FAK is a unique approach of highly-specific molecular-targeted therapy and can be used to develop oral-based cancer therapeutics.