The loss of vital cells within healthy tissues contributes to the development, progression and treatment outcomes of many human disorders, including neurological and infectious diseases as well as environmental and medical toxicities. Conversely, the abnormal survival and accumulation of damaged or superfluous cells drives human pathologies, including cancers and autoimmune diseases. Apoptosis is an evolutionarily conserved cell death pathway that is responsible for the proper culling of cells during normal eukaryotic development and the maintenance of organismal homeostasis. This pathway is controlled by the BCL-2 (B Cell Lymphoma 2) family of proteins, which contains both pro-apoptotic and pro-survival members that balance the decision between cellular life and death. Recent insights into the dynamic interactions between the BCL-2 proteins and how they control apoptotic cell death in healthy and diseased cells have uncovered novel opportunities for therapeutic intervention. Importantly, the development of both positive and negative small molecule modulators of apoptosis are now enabling researchers to translate the discoveries that have been made in the laboratory into clinical practice to positively impact human health.

Cytotoxic chemotherapy targets elements common to all nucleated human cells, such as DNA and microtubules, yet it selectively kills tumor cells. Here we show that clinical response to these drugs correlates with, and may be partially governed by, the pre-treatment proximity of tumor cell mitochondria to the apoptotic threshold, a property called mitochondrial priming. We used BH3 profiling to measure priming in tumor cells from patients with multiple myeloma, acute myelogenous and lymphoblastic leukemia, and ovarian cancer. This assay measures mitochondrial response to peptides derived from pro-apoptotic BH3 domains of proteins critical for death signaling to mitochondria. Patients with highly primed cancers exhibited superior clinical response to chemotherapy. In contrast, chemoresistant cancers and normal tissues were poorly primed. Manipulation of mitochondrial priming might enhance the efficacy of cytotoxic agents.

SUMMARY There is a lack of effective predictive biomarkers to precisely assign optimal therapy to cancer patients. While most efforts are directed at inferring drug response phenotype based on genotype, there is very focused and useful phenotypic information to be gained from directly perturbing the patient’s living cancer cell with the drug(s) in question. To satisfy this unmet need we developed the Dynamic BH3 Profiling technique to measure early changes in net pro-apoptotic signaling at the mitochondrion (‘priming’) induced by chemotherapeutic agents in cancer cells, not requiring prolonged ex vivo culture. We find in cell line and clinical experiments that early drug-induced death signaling measured by Dynamic BH3 Profiling predicts chemotherapy response across many cancer types and many agents, including combinations of chemotherapies. We propose that Dynamic BH3 Profiling can be used as a broadly applicable predictive biomarker to predict cytotoxic response of cancers to chemotherapeutics in vivo.