TPX2 overexpression promotes sensitivity to dasatinib in breast cancer by activating YAP transcriptional signaling

Abstract

Chromosomal instability (CIN) is a hallmark of cancer aggressiveness, providing genetic plasticity and tumor heterogeneity that allows the tumor to evolve and adapt to stress conditions. CIN is considered a cancer therapeutic biomarker because healthy cells do not exhibit CIN. Despite recent efforts to identify therapeutic strategies related to CIN, the results obtained have been very limited. CIN is characterized by a genetic signature where a collection of genes, mostly mitotic regulators, are overexpressed in CIN-positive tumors, providing aggressiveness and poor prognosis. We attempted to identify new therapeutic strategies related to CIN genes by performing a drug screen, using cells that individually express CIN-associated genes in an inducible manner. We find that the overexpression of targeting protein for Xklp2 (TPX2) enhances sensitivity to the proto-oncogene c-Src (SRC) inhibitor dasatinib due to activation of the Yes-associated protein 1 (YAP) pathway. Furthermore, using breast cancer data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and a cohort of cancer-derived patient samples, we find that both TPX2 overexpression and YAP activation are present in a significant percentage of cancer tumor samples and are associated with poor prognosis; therefore, they are putative biomarkers for selection for dasatinib therapy.