There is a need to improve treatments for metastatic breast cancer. Here we show activation of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) and MAP kinase (MAPK) pathways in a MMTV-CreBRCA1f/fp53+/− mouse model of breast cancer. When treated with the pan-Class IA PI3K-inhibitor NVP-BKM120, tumor doubling was delayed from 5 to 26 days. NVP-BKM120 reduced AKT phosphorylation, tumor cell proliferation and angiogenesis. Resistant tumors maintained suppression of AKT phosphorylation but exhibited activation of the MAPK-pathway at the “pushing margin”. Surprisingly, PI3K-inhibition increased indicators of DNA damage, poly-ADP-ribosylation and γH2AX, but decreased Rad51 focus formation, suggesting a critical role of PI3K activity for Rad51 recruitment. PARP-inhibitor Olaparib alone attenuated tumor growth modestly; however, the combination of NVP-BKM120 and Olaparib delayed tumor doubling to more than 70 days in the mouse model and over 50 days in xenotransplants from human BRCA1-related tumors, suggesting that combined PI3K- and PARP-inhibition might be effective treatment for BRCA1-related tumors.

The repair of toxic double-strand breaks (DSB) is critical for the maintenance of genome integrity. The major mechanisms that cope with DSB are: homologous recombination (HR) and classical or alternative nonhomologous end joining (C-NHEJ versus A-EJ). Because these pathways compete for the repair of DSB, the choice of the appropriate repair pathway is pivotal. Among the mechanisms that influence this choice, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) end resection plays a critical role by driving cells to HR, while accurate C-NHEJ is suppressed. Furthermore, end resection promotes error-prone A-EJ. Increasing evidence define Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 3 (PARP3, also known as ARTD3) as an important player in cellular response to DSB. In this work, we reveal a specific feature of PARP3 that together with Ku80 limits DNA end resection and thereby helps in making the choice between HR and NHEJ pathways. PARP3 interacts with and PARylates Ku70/Ku80. The depletion of PARP3 impairs the recruitment of YFP-Ku80 to laser-induced DNA damage sites and induces an imbalance between BRCA1 and 53BP1. Both events result in compromised accurate C-NHEJ and a concomitant increase in DNA end resection. Nevertheless, HR is significantly reduced upon PARP3 silencing while the enhanced end resection causes mutagenic deletions during A-EJ. As a result, the absence of PARP3 confers hypersensitivity to anti-tumoral drugs generating DSB.