An important hallmark of cancer cells is acquired resistance toward apoptosis. The apoptotic pathway is the most well-defined cell death program and is characterized by several morphological and biochemical features. The tumor suppressor protein p53 is a critical regulator of apoptosis in many cell types. p53 stimulates a wide network of signals that act through either extrinsic or intrinsic pathways of apoptosis. However, a number of studies have shown that apoptosis can be induced in a p53-independent manner as well. In this study, we examined the mechanism of apoptosis in p53-null breast cancer cells in response to the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib. Initially, we determined the p53 status of 4T1 breast carcinoma and 4THMpc (a highly mestatic derivative of 4T1) cells and verified that both cells are p53 deficient. It was subsequently shown that apoptosis can be induced in both cells in a dose-dependent manner in response to bortezomib treatment, based on DNA fragmentation evidence. Western blot analyses of ubiquitin-protein conjugates additionally showed that the proteasome is potently inhibited by bortezomib in p53-null 4T1 and 4THMpc cells. The results presented in the current study also show that caspase-3 is significantly activated in response to the treatment with bortezomib, implying that induction of apoptosis in these p53-deficient cells is occurring via caspase-3. The additional results presented here suggest that the pro-apoptotic proteins Bad, Noxa, and Puma are not critical regulators of apoptosis induction in p53-null 4T1 and 4THMpc cells. Similarly, there was no difference in the expression level of Mcl-1 in treated cells, suggesting that this anti-apoptotic protein is also uninvolved in the apoptotic response resulting from bortezomib treatment. In contrast, a very significant upregulation of the anti-apoptotic protein Hsp25/27 was detected in these p53-deficient cells after treatment with bortezomib. If the increased expression of Hsp25/27 protein levels are muting the apoptotic effects of the bortezomib treatment, then the apoptosis-inducing effects of such proteasome inhibitors might be increased with approaches simultaneously inhibiting Hsp25/27 protein in p53-deficient cells.

p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) belongs to the MAPK superfamily, phosphorylating serine and/or threonine residues of the target proteins. The activation of p38 MAPK leads to cell growth, differentiation, inflammation, survival or apoptosis. In this study, we tested the effect of two highly specific and potent inhibitors of p38 MAPK (namely, SB203580 and SB202190) on human breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 to elucidate the controversial role of p38 MAPK on cell proliferation and/or cell migration/metastasis further. It was determined that the IC value of SB203580 was 85.1 µM, while that of SB202190 was 46.6 µM, suggesting that SB202190 is slightly more effective than SB203580. To verify the effect of each inhibitor on cell proliferation and cytotoxicity, the cells were treated with various doses of SB203580 and SB202190 and examined using iCELLigence system. No significant effect of 1 and 5 µM of both inhibitors were seen on cell proliferation as compared to the DMSO-treated control cells for up to 96 h. On the other hand, both SB203580 and SB202190 significantly prevented cell proliferation at a concentration of 50 µM. SB202190 was again more effective than SB203580. Afterwards, we tested the effect of each inhibitor on cell migration using wound assay. Both SB203580 and SB202190 significantly reduced cell migration in a time-dependent manner at a concentration of 50 µM. However, interestingly it was observed that a low and noncytotoxic dose of 5 µM of SB203580 and SB202190 also did cause significant cell migration inhibition at 48 h of the treatment, corroborating the fact that p38 MAPK pathway has a critical role in cell migration/metastasis. Then, we tested whether each p38 MAPK inhibitor has any effect on cell adhesion during a treatment period of 3 h using iCELLigence system. A concentration of only 50 µM of SB202190 reduced cell adhesion for about 1.5 h (p < 0.001); after that period of time, cell adhesion in 50 µM SB202190-treated cells returned to the level of the control cells. To determine the mechanism of growth and cell migration inhibitory effects of p38 MAPK inhibitors, the activation/inactivation of various proteins and enzymes was subsequently analyzed by PathScan Intracellular Signaling Array kit. The ERK1/2 phosphorylation level was not modified by low concentrations (1 or 5 µM) of SB202190 and SB203580; while a high concentration (50 µM) of both inhibitors caused significant reductions in the ERK1/2 phosphorylation. In addition, it was determined that both p38 MAPK inhibitors caused significant increases on the Ser15 phosphorylation of mutant p53 in MDA-MB-231 under these experimental conditions; while SB202190 was more potent than SB203580.

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Altogether, the results presented here indicate that bortezomib + OTSSP167 is a novel and effective combination and may be tested further for cancer treatment in vivo and in clinical settings.

The phenomenon of acquired resistance to chemotherapeutic agents is a long-standing conundrum in cancer treatment. To help delineate drug resistance mechanisms and pave the way for the development of novel strategies, we generated a PC3 prostate cancer cell line resistant to proteasome inhibitor bortezomib for the first time. The resistant cells were found to have an IC 50 value of 359.6 nM, whereas the IC 50 value of parental cells was 82.6 nM after 24 h of treatment with varying doses of bortezomib. The resistant cells were also partly crossresistant to the novel proteasome inhibitor carfilzomib; however, they were not resistant to widely used chemotherapeutic agent vincristine sulfate, indicating that enhanced cellular drug efflux via the multidrug resistance (MDR) transporters is not the molecular basis of the resistance. Since both bortezomib and carfilzomib target and inhibit the chymotrypsin-related activity residing in the b5 subunit of the proteasome (PSMB5), we next examined its expression and found surprisingly no significant alteration in the expression profile of the mature form. However, a significant increase in the accumulation of the precursor form of PSMB5 in response to 100 nM bortezomib was observed in the parental cells without a significant accumulation in the resistant cells. The results presented here thus suggest that the molecular mechanisms causing resistance to proteasome inhibitors need to be examined in-depth to overcome the resistance to ubiquitin-proteasome pathway inhibitors in cancer treatment.