Quantification of microenvironmental metabolites in murine cancers reveals determinants of tumor nutrient availability

  1. Mark R Sullivan
  2. Laura V Danai
  3. Caroline A Lewis
  4. Sze Ham Chan
  5. Dan Y Gui
  6. Tenzin Kunchok
  7. Emily A Dennstedt
  8. Matthew G Vander Heiden  Is a corresponding author
  9. Alexander Muir  Is a corresponding author
  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
  2. University of Chicago, United States

Abstract

Cancer cell metabolism is heavily influenced by microenvironmental factors, including nutrient availability. Therefore, knowledge of microenvironmental nutrient levels is essential to understand tumor metabolism. To measure the extracellular nutrient levels available to tumors, we utilized quantitative metabolomics methods to measure the absolute concentrations of >118 metabolites in plasma and tumor interstitial fluid, the extracellular fluid that perfuses tumors. Comparison of nutrient levels in tumor interstitial fluid and plasma revealed that the nutrients available to tumors differ from those present in circulation. Further, by comparing interstitial fluid nutrient levels between autochthonous and transplant models of murine pancreatic and lung adenocarcinoma, we found that tumor type, anatomical location and animal diet affect local nutrient availability. These data provide a comprehensive characterization of the nutrients present in the tumor microenvironment of widely used models of lung and pancreatic cancer and identify factors that influence metabolite levels in tumors.

Data availability

Source data files detailing the concentrations of each metabolite in each sample are included for all figures. We have also deposited this information and the raw mass spectra in Metabolomics Workbench (http://www.metabolomicsworkbench.org/) as project ID: PR000750.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Mark R Sullivan

    Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  2. Laura V Danai

    Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
    Competing interests
    Laura V Danai, has applied for patents for therapeutic strategies to target cancer metabolism.(US Patent App. 15/890,220).
  3. Caroline A Lewis

    Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1787-5084
  4. Sze Ham Chan

    Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  5. Dan Y Gui

    Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
    Competing interests
    Dan Y Gui, has applied for patents for therapeutic strategies to target cancer metabolism.(US Patent App. 15/890,220).
  6. Tenzin Kunchok

    Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  7. Emily A Dennstedt

    Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  8. Matthew G Vander Heiden

    Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
    For correspondence
    mvh@mit.edu
    Competing interests
    Matthew G Vander Heiden, has applied for patents for therapeutic strategies to target cancer metabolism. (US Patent App. 15/890,220). Also on the scientific advisory board of Agios Pharmaceuticals, Aeglea Biotherapeutics, and Auron Therapeutics, which seek to exploit altered metabolism for therapy. Reviewing editor, eLife.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6702-4192
  9. Alexander Muir

    Ben May Department for Cancer Research, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States
    For correspondence
    amuir@uchicago.edu
    Competing interests
    Alexander Muir, has applied for patents for therapeutic strategies to target cancer metabolism.(US Patent App. 15/890,220).
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3811-3054

Funding

National Cancer Institute (R01CA168653)

  • Matthew G Vander Heiden

National Cancer Institute (F32CA210421)

  • Laura V Danai
  • Alexander Muir

Stand Up To Cancer

  • Mark R Sullivan
  • Laura V Danai
  • Dan Y Gui
  • Matthew G Vander Heiden
  • Alexander Muir

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  • Mark R Sullivan
  • Laura V Danai
  • Dan Y Gui
  • Matthew G Vander Heiden
  • Alexander Muir

Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research

  • Mark R Sullivan
  • Laura V Danai
  • Dan Y Gui
  • Matthew G Vander Heiden
  • Alexander Muir

Lustgarten Foundation

  • Mark R Sullivan
  • Laura V Danai
  • Dan Y Gui
  • Matthew G Vander Heiden
  • Alexander Muir

Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research (Koch Institute Graduate Fellowship)

  • Mark R Sullivan

National Cancer Institute (R01CA201276)

  • Matthew G Vander Heiden

National Cancer Institute (P30CA1405141)

  • Matthew G Vander Heiden

National Cancer Institute (F32CA213810)

  • Laura V Danai
  • Alexander Muir

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. All animals experiments were performed using protocols (#1115-110-18) that were approved by the MIT Committee on Animal Care (IACUC). All surgeries were performed using isoflurane anesthesia administered by vaporizer and every effort was made to minimize suffering.

Copyright

© 2019, Sullivan et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 20,003
    views
  • 3,227
    downloads
  • 401
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Mark R Sullivan
  2. Laura V Danai
  3. Caroline A Lewis
  4. Sze Ham Chan
  5. Dan Y Gui
  6. Tenzin Kunchok
  7. Emily A Dennstedt
  8. Matthew G Vander Heiden
  9. Alexander Muir
(2019)
Quantification of microenvironmental metabolites in murine cancers reveals determinants of tumor nutrient availability
eLife 8:e44235.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.44235

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.44235

Further reading

    1. Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    2. Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Amanda Mixon Blackwell, Yasaman Jami-Alahmadi ... Paul A Sigala
    Research Article

    Malaria parasites have evolved unusual metabolic adaptations that specialize them for growth within heme-rich human erythrocytes. During blood-stage infection, Plasmodium falciparum parasites internalize and digest abundant host hemoglobin within the digestive vacuole. This massive catabolic process generates copious free heme, most of which is biomineralized into inert hemozoin. Parasites also express a divergent heme oxygenase (HO)-like protein (PfHO) that lacks key active-site residues and has lost canonical HO activity. The cellular role of this unusual protein that underpins its retention by parasites has been unknown. To unravel PfHO function, we first determined a 2.8 Å-resolution X-ray structure that revealed a highly α-helical fold indicative of distant HO homology. Localization studies unveiled PfHO targeting to the apicoplast organelle, where it is imported and undergoes N-terminal processing but retains most of the electropositive transit peptide. We observed that conditional knockdown of PfHO was lethal to parasites, which died from defective apicoplast biogenesis and impaired isoprenoid-precursor synthesis. Complementation and molecular-interaction studies revealed an essential role for the electropositive N-terminus of PfHO, which selectively associates with the apicoplast genome and enzymes involved in nucleic acid metabolism and gene expression. PfHO knockdown resulted in a specific deficiency in levels of apicoplast-encoded RNA but not DNA. These studies reveal an essential function for PfHO in apicoplast maintenance and suggest that Plasmodium repurposed the conserved HO scaffold from its canonical heme-degrading function in the ancestral chloroplast to fulfill a critical adaptive role in organelle gene expression.

    1. Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    2. Cell Biology
    Senem Ntourmas, Martin Sachs ... Dominic B Bernkopf
    Research Article

    Activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway crucially depends on the polymerization of dishevelled 2 (DVL2) into biomolecular condensates. However, given the low affinity of known DVL2 self-interaction sites and its low cellular concentration, it is unclear how polymers can form. Here, we detect oligomeric DVL2 complexes at endogenous protein levels in human cell lines, using a biochemical ultracentrifugation assay. We identify a low-complexity region (LCR4) in the C-terminus whose deletion and fusion decreased and increased the complexes, respectively. Notably, LCR4-induced complexes correlated with the formation of microscopically visible multimeric condensates. Adjacent to LCR4, we mapped a conserved domain (CD2) promoting condensates only. Molecularly, LCR4 and CD2 mediated DVL2 self-interaction via aggregating residues and phenylalanine stickers, respectively. Point mutations inactivating these interaction sites impaired Wnt pathway activation by DVL2. Our study discovers DVL2 complexes with functional importance for Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Moreover, we provide evidence that DVL2 condensates form in two steps by pre-oligomerization via high-affinity interaction sites, such as LCR4, and subsequent condensation via low-affinity interaction sites, such as CD2.