This is a competing continuation proposal for a multi-investigator project to study and contravene EGFR signaling in cancer. The investigators bring to bear expertise in protein engineering (Wittrup, MIT), mass spectrometric phosphoproteomics (White, MIT), computational systems biology (Lauffenburger, MIT), and structural biology (Kuriyan, UC Berkeley). The first ten years of this project has produced 52 publications that have been cited in total 2,088 times, with a mean of 40 and a median of 24 citations per paper, and an h index of 26. In this renewal we propose to extend a novel therapeutic modality developed in the previous grant period, and to deepen our understanding of EGFR signaling networks and receptor structure/function relationships. We have created a novel triepitopic antibody topology by appending two small Fn3-based EGFR binding domains to the cetuximab IgG. This single construct binds at three nonoverlapping epitopes on EGFR, driving rapid clustering and downregulation without detectable receptor phosphorylation or downstream signaling. The triepitopic antibody controls growth of xenografted tumors that are resistant to the parent cetuximab antibody, indicating a qualitative improvement in mechanism of action that overcomes resistance due to KRAS and BRAF mutations. We will extend the functionality of this triepitopic construct to inhibit HER3 in order to pre-emptively overcome a key resistance mechanism. We will also employ a novel EGFR-targeted siRNA delivery vector to identify genes whose silencing produce antitumor efficacy synergistic with EGFR antagonism. We will apply our sophisticated experimental and computational network analysis tools to understanding three forms of resistance to anti-EGFR therapeutics: a) mutations in effector kinases such as KRAS and BRAF;b) upregulation of MET and HER3;and c) altered proteolytic shedding of ErbB ligands and ectodomains. In each case, signaling network interconnectivity and dynamics will be studied in untreated, cetuximab treated, and triepitopic antibody treated cell lines to examine how therapeutic interventions interact with the dysregulated pathways present in cancer cells. We will extend our structural studies of EGFR receptor biology to deepen our understanding of the flow of information from EGFR ligand binding outside the cell to kinase activation in the cytoplasm. Membrane protein NMR is revealing key conformational states of the EGFR transmembrane domain. Crystallographic, mass spectrometric, and fluorescence microscopic assays will help identify the temporal order and topological control of autophosphorylation in the activated EGFR dimer. This unusually comprehensively integrated multidisciplinary project has excellent momentum, and the team is enthusiastically engaged in pressing forward in these exciting new directions.

Public Health Relevance

A team of four scientists and engineers at MIT and UC Berkeley are analyzing a particular tumor-promoting regulatory pathway in cancer cells, and designing potential new drugs to specifically and potently inhibit these inappropriate growth signals. A particular focus is to understand the mechanisms that tumors use to resist such treatments, so as to anticipate and overcome such resistance.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01CA096504-12
Application #
8650274
Study Section
Drug Discovery and Molecular Pharmacology Study Section (DMP)
Program Officer
Yovandich, Jason L
Project Start
2002-09-13
Project End
2018-03-31
Budget Start
2014-04-01
Budget End
2015-03-31
Support Year
12
Fiscal Year
2014
Total Cost
$560,553
Indirect Cost
$154,979
Name
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department
Internal Medicine/Medicine
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
001425594
City
Cambridge
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02139
Chen, Tiffany F; Li, Kevin K; Zhu, Eric F et al. (2018) Artificial Anti-Tumor Opsonizing Proteins with Fibronectin Scaffolds Engineered for Specificity to Each of the Murine Fc?R Types. J Mol Biol 430:1786-1798
Rothenberg, Daniel A; Taliaferro, J Matthew; Huber, Sabrina M et al. (2018) A Proteomics Approach to Profiling the Temporal Translational Response to Stress and Growth. iScience 9:367-381
Yoneyama, Toshie; Gorry, Michael; Sobo-Vujanovic, Andrea et al. (2018) ADAM10 Sheddase Activity is a Potential Lung-Cancer Biomarker. J Cancer 9:2559-2570
Kelly, Ryan L; Le, Doris; Zhao, Jessie et al. (2018) Reduction of Nonspecificity Motifs in Synthetic Antibody Libraries. J Mol Biol 430:119-130
Cantor, Aaron J; Shah, Neel H; Kuriyan, John (2018) Deep mutational analysis reveals functional trade-offs in the sequences of EGFR autophosphorylation sites. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 115:E7303-E7312
Kauke, Monique J; Traxlmayr, Michael W; Parker, Jillian A et al. (2017) An engineered protein antagonist of K-Ras/B-Raf interaction. Sci Rep 7:5831
Chen, Tiffany F; Sazinsky, Stephen L; Houde, Damian et al. (2017) Engineering Aglycosylated IgG Variants with Wild-Type or Improved Binding Affinity to Human Fc Gamma RIIA and Fc Gamma RIIIAs. J Mol Biol 429:2528-2541
Wittrup, K Dane (2017) Antitumor Antibodies Can Drive Therapeutic T Cell Responses. Trends Cancer 3:615-620
Zweemer, Annelien J M; French, Cory B; Mesfin, Joshua et al. (2017) Apoptotic Bodies Elicit Gas6-Mediated Migration of AXL-Expressing Tumor Cells. Mol Cancer Res 15:1656-1666
Emdal, Kristina B; Dittmann, Antje; Reddy, Raven J et al. (2017) Characterization of In Vivo Resistance to Osimertinib and JNJ-61186372, an EGFR/Met Bispecific Antibody, Reveals Unique and Consensus Mechanisms of Resistance. Mol Cancer Ther 16:2572-2585

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