Increased autophagy accelerates colchicine-induced muscle toxicity

Colchicine treatment is associated with an autophagic vacuolar myopathy in human patients. The presumed mechanism of colchicine-induced myotoxicity is the destabilization of the microtubule system that leads to impaired autophagosome-lysosome fusion and the accumulation of autophagic vacuoles. Using the MTOR inhibitor rapamycin we augmented colchicine’s myotoxic effect by increasing the autophagic flux; this resulted in an acute myopathy with muscle necrosis. In contrast to myonecrosis induced by cardiotoxin, myonecrosis induced by a combination of rapamycin and colchicine was associated with accumulation of autophagic substrates such as LC3-II and SQSTM1; as a result, autophagic vacuoles accumulated in the center of myofibers, where LC3-positive autophagosomes failed to colocalize with the lysosomal protein marker LAMP2. A similar pattern of central LC3 accumulation and myonecrosis is seen in human patients with colchicine myopathy, many of whom have been treated with statins (HMGCR/HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors) in addition to colchicine. In mice, cotreatment with colchicine and simvastatin also led to muscle necrosis and LC3 accumulation, suggesting that, like rapamycin, simvastatin activates autophagy. Consistent with this, treatment of mice with four different statin medications enhanced autophagic flux in skeletal muscle in vivo. Polypharmacy is a known risk factor for toxic myopathies; our data suggest that some medication combinations may simultaneously activate upstream autophagy signaling pathways while inhibiting the degradation of these newly synthesized autophagosomes, resulting in myotoxicity.     

Autophagy activity contributes to programmed cell death in Caenorhabditis elegans

The physiological relationship between autophagy and programmed cell death during C. elegans development is poorly understood. In C. elegans, 131 somatic cells and a large number of germline cells undergo programmed cell death. Autophagy genes function in the removal of somatic cell corpses during embryogenesis. Here we demonstrated that autophagy activity participates in germ-cell death induced by genotoxic stress. Upon γ ray treatment, fewer germline cells execute the death program in autophagy mutants. Autophagy also contributes to physiological germ-cell death and post-embryonic cell death in ventral cord neurons when ced-3 caspase activity is partially compromised. Our study reveals that autophagy activity contributes to programmed cell death during C. elegans development.     

DEDD,a novel tumor repressor,reverses epithelial-mesenchymal transition by activating selective autophagy

Metastasis is the spread of cancer cells from their primary location to other parts of the body. Metastatic cancer is responsible for most cancer deaths. Increasing evidence indicates that epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a crucial developmental program, contributes to control cancer invasion and metastasis. We recently reported that death effector domain-containing DNA-binding protein (DEDD), a key effector molecule for cell death signaling receptors, attenuates EMT and acts as an endogenous suppressor of tumor growth and metastasis. We found that DEDD physically interacts with the class III PtdIns 3-kinase complex containing PIK3C3 and BECN1, which controls critical aspects of autophagy; this interaction activates autophagy and induces the autophagy-mediated lysosomal degradation of SNAI/Snail and TWIST, two master inducers of the EMT process. Further study reveals that the DEDD-PIK3C3 interaction can support the stability of PIK3C3 to maintain autophagic activity and promote the degradation of SNAI and TWIST. Our finding indicates that DEDD is a prognostic marker and a potential therapeutic target for the prevention and treatment of cancer metastasis. Moreover, regulation of the DEDD-PIK3C3 interaction may serve as an entry point to translate modifiers of this interaction into clinical endpoints.     

Targeting autophagy as a novel strategy for facilitating the therapeutic action of potentiators on ΔF508 cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator

Channel activators (potentiators) of cystic fibrosis (CF) transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), can be used for the treatment of the small subset of CF patients that carry plasma membrane-resident CFTR mutants. However, approximately 90% of CF patients carry the misfolded ΔF508-CFTR and are poorly responsive to potentiators, because ΔF508-CFTR is intrinsically unstable at the plasma membrane (PM) even if rescued by pharmacological correctors. We have demonstrated that human and mouse CF airways are autophagy deficient due to functional sequestration of BECN1 and that the tissue transglutaminase-2 inhibitor, cystamine, or antioxidants restore BECN1-dependent autophagy and reduce SQSTM1/p62 levels, thus favoring ΔF508-CFTR trafficking to the epithelial surface. Here, we investigated whether these treatments could facilitate the beneficial action of potentiators on ΔF508-CFTR homozygous airways. Cystamine or the superoxide dismutase (SOD)/catalase-mimetic EUK-134 stabilized ΔF508-CFTR at the plasma membrane of airway epithelial cells and sustained the expression of CFTR at the epithelial surface well beyond drug withdrawal, overexpressing BECN1 and depleting SQSTM1. This facilitates the beneficial action of potentiators in controlling inflammation in ex vivo ΔF508-CFTR homozygous human nasal biopsies and in vivo in mouse ΔF508-CFTR lungs. Direct depletion of Sqstm1 by shRNAs in vivo in ΔF508-CFTR mice synergized with potentiators in sustaining surface CFTR expression and suppressing inflammation. Cystamine pre-treatment restored ΔF508-CFTR response to the CFTR potentiators genistein, Vrx-532 or Vrx-770 in freshly isolated brushed nasal epithelial cells from ΔF508-CFTR homozygous patients. These findings delineate a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of CF patients with the ΔF508-CFTR mutation in which patients are first treated with cystamine and subsequently pulsed with CFTR potentiators.     

Energy deprivation by silibinin in colorectal cancer cells

Small molecules with the potential to initiate different types of programmed cell death could be useful ‘adjunct therapy’ where current anticancer modalities fail to generate significant activity due to a defective apoptotic machinery or resistance of cancer cells to the specific death mechanism induced by that treatment. The current study identified silibinin, for the first time, as one such natural agent, having dual efficacy against colorectal cancer (CRC) cells. First, silibinin rapidly induced oxidative stress in CRC SW480 cells due to reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation with a concomitant dissipation of mitchondrial potential (ΔΨ_m) and cytochrome c release leading to mild apoptosis as a biological effect. However, with increased exposure to silibinin, cytoplasmic vacuolization intensified within the cells followed by sequestration of the organelles, which inhibits the further release of cytochrome c. Interestingly, this decrease in apoptotic response correlated with increased autophagic events as evidenced by tracking the dynamics of LC3-II within the cells. Mechanistic studies revealed that silibinin strongly inhibited PIK3CA-AKT–MTOR but activated MAP2K1/2-MAPK1/3 pathways for its biological effects. Corroborating these effects, endoplasmic reticulum stress was generated and glucose uptake inhibition as well as energy restriction were induced by silibinin, thus, mimicking starvation-like conditions. Further, the cellular damage to tumor cells by silibinin was severe and irreparable due to sustained interference in essential cellular processes such as mitochondrial metabolism, phospholipid and protein synthesis, suggesting that silibinin harbors a deadly ‘double-edged sword’ against CRC cells thereby further advocating its clinical effectiveness against this malignancy.     

Vaccinia virus leads to ATG12–ATG3 conjugation and deficiency in autophagosome formation

The interactions between viruses and cellular autophagy have been widely reported. On the one hand, autophagy is an important innate immune response against viral infection. On the other hand, some viruses exploit the autophagy pathway for their survival and proliferation in host cells. Vaccinia virus is a member of the family of Poxviridae which includes the smallpox virus. The biogenesis of vaccinia envelopes, including the core envelope of the immature virus (IV), is not fully understood. In this study we investigated the possible interaction between vaccinia virus and the autophagy membrane biogenesis machinery. Massive LC3 lipidation was observed in mouse fibroblast cells upon vaccinia virus infection. Surprisingly, the vaccinia virus induced LC3 lipidation was shown to be independent of ATG5 and ATG7, as the atg5 and atg7 null mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) exhibited the same high levels of LC3 lipidation as compared with the wild-type MEFs. Mass spectrometry and immunoblotting analyses revealed that the viral infection led to the direct conjugation of ATG3, which is the E2-like enzyme required for LC3-phosphoethanonamine conjugation, to ATG12, which is a component of the E3-like ATG12–ATG5-ATG16 complex for LC3 lipidation. Consistently, ATG3 was shown to be required for the vaccinia virus induced LC3 lipidation. Strikingly, despite the high levels of LC3 lipidation, subsequent electron microscopy showed that vaccinia virus-infected cells were devoid of autophagosomes, either in normal growth medium or upon serum and amino acid deprivation. In addition, no autophagy flux was observed in virus-infected cells. We further demonstrated that neither ATG3 nor LC3 lipidation is crucial for viral membrane biogenesis or viral proliferation and infection. Together, these results indicated that vaccinia virus does not exploit the cellular autophagic membrane biogenesis machinery for their viral membrane production. Moreover, this study demonstrated that vaccinia virus instead actively disrupts the cellular autophagy through a novel molecular mechanism that is associated with aberrant LC3 lipidation and a direct conjugation between ATG12 and ATG3.     

Involvement of autophagy in the response of tumor cells to PtdIns3K inhibitors

The phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway plays a crucial role in cell proliferation and survival and is frequently activated by genetic and epigenetic alterations in human cancer. An arsenal of pharmacological inhibitors of key signaling enzymes in this pathway, including class I_A PI3K isoforms, has been developed in the past decade and several compounds have entered clinical testing in cancer patients. The PIK3CA/p110α isoform is the most studied enzyme of the family and a validated cancer target. The induction of autophagy by PI3K pathway inhibitors has been documented in various cancers, although a clear picture about the significance of this phenomenon is still missing, especially in the in vivo situation. A better understanding of the contribution of autophagy to the action of PI3K inhibitors on tumors cells is important, since it may limit or enhance the action of these compounds, depending on the cellular context.     

Hypoxia-induced tumor cell autophagy mediates resistance to anti-angiogenic therapy

While anti-angiogenic therapy was initially greeted enthusiastically by the cancer community, initial successes with this therapeutic modality were tempered by the failure of angiogenesis inhibitors to produce sustained clinical responses in most patients, with resistance to the inhibitors frequently developing. We recently reported that hypoxia increases after the devascularization caused by anti-angiogenic therapy, consistent with the goals of these therapies, but that some tumor cells become resistant and survive the hypoxic insult elicited by anti-angiogenic therapy through autophagy by activating both AMPK and HIF1A pathways. These findings suggest that modulating the autophagy pathway may someday allow anti-angiogenic therapy to fulfill its therapeutic potential. However, further work will clearly be needed to develop more potent and specific autophagy inhibitors and to better understand the regulators of autophagy in malignant cells.