Discovering the anti-cancer potential of non-oncology drugs by systematic viability profiling

Steven M. Corsello, Rohith T. Nagari, Ryan D. Spangler, Jordan Rossen, Mustafa Kocak, Jordan G. Bryan, Ranad Humeidi, David Peck, Xiaoyun Wu, Andrew A. Tang, Vickie M. Wang, Samantha A. Bender, Evan Lemire, Rajiv Narayan, Philip Montgomery, Uri Ben-David, Colin W. Garvie, Yejia Chen, Matthew G. Rees, Nicholas J. LyonsJames M. McFarland, Bang T. Wong, Li Wang, Nancy Dumont, Patrick J. O'Hearn, Eric Stefan, John G. Doench, Caitlin N. Harrington, Heidi Greulich, Matthew Meyerson, Francisca Vazquez, Aravind Subramanian, Jennifer A. Roth, Joshua A. Bittker, Jesse S. Boehm, Christopher C. Mader, Aviad Tsherniak, Todd R. Golub

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Anti-cancer uses of non-oncology drugs have occasionally been found, but such discoveries have been serendipitous. We sought to create a public resource containing the growth inhibitory activity of 4,518 drugs tested across 578 human cancer cell lines. We used PRISM, a molecular barcoding method, to screen drugs against cell lines in pools. An unexpectedly large number of non-oncology drugs selectively inhibited subsets of cancer cell lines in a manner predictable from the cell lines' molecular features. Our findings include compounds that killed by inducing PDE3A-SLFN12 complex formation; vanadium-containing compounds whose killing depended on the sulfate transporter SLC26A2; the alcohol dependence drug disulfiram, which killed cells with low expression of metallothioneins; and the anti-inflammatory drug tepoxalin, which killed via the multi-drug resistance protein ABCB1. The PRISM drug repurposing resource (https://depmap.org/repurposing) is a starting point to develop new oncology therapeutics, and more rarely, for potential direct clinical translation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)235-248
Number of pages14
JournalNature Cancer
Volume1
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Feb 2020

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Oncology
  • Cancer Research

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