Pre-clinical evaluation of PV-10 for in vitro anti-tumor activity in refractory and high-risk adult solid tumors.

Abstract

e14544 Background: PV-10 (10% rose bengal disodium; 4,5,6,7-tetrachloro-2’,4’,5’,7’-tetraiodofluorescein) is a novel therapeutic agent previously shown to have potent anti-tumor activity following intratumoral injection in melanoma and refractory neuroblastoma, and currently is undergoing clinical testing as a single-agent for refractory metastatic neuroendocrine cancer (NCT02693067) and in combination with checkpoint inhibitors for metastatic melanoma (NCT02557321) and metastatic uveal melanoma (NCT00986661). Given the established clinical efficacy of PV-10 in adult melanoma and hepatic cancers via intratumoral injection, there is a need to evaluate the therapeutic potential of PV-10 in high-risk and refractory adult solid tumors via systemic administration. Our study aims to identify the clinical potential of systemically-delivered PV-10 by first generating prerequisite in vitro data for adult malignancies. Methods: Cytotoxicity assays were performed using the Alamar Blue assay to study the effects of PV-10 in vitro 96-hours post-treatment against a panel of adult solid tumor cell lines derived from breast (MCF-7, T-47D, MDA-MB-231), colorectal (HCT-116, LoVo, T-84), head and neck (CAL-27, Detroit-562, FaDu, UM-SCC-1), and testicular (NCC-IT, NTERA-2, TCAM-2) tissues. Light microscopy and Western blotting were used to investigate apoptosis induction and target modulation in tumor cells after PV-10 treatment. Results: In vitro results from our study demonstrate that PV-10 is cytotoxic at pharmacologically relevant concentrations across the indicated cell lines. Specifically, tumor cell lines originating from testicular tissues were highly sensitive to PV-10 treatment (Mean ± SD IC50: 37.5 ± 16.4 µM; n = 3) compared to breast (117.5 ± 71.0 µM; n = 3), colorectal (64.79 µM; n = 3), and head and neck (106.6 ± 29.2 µM; n = 4) cell lines. Western blot analyses showed dose- and time-dependent activation of pro-apoptotic protein markers in caspase-3 and PARP cleavage, indicating drug-induced apoptosis. Conclusions: This study provides the first pre-clinical results of PV-10 as a novel systemically-delivered therapeutic agent for a range of high-risk and refractory adult solid tumors. Data obtained from our in vitro experiments using a broad repertoire of cell lines that represent diverse molecular and phenotypic subtypes of solid tumors in adults can serve as prerequisite pre-clinical data to establish clinical testing in these populations.