MELK is an oncogenic kinase essential for mitotic progression in basal-like breast cancer cells
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, United States
- Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, United States
- Harvard Medical School, United States
Abstract
Despite marked advances in breast cancer therapy, basal-like breast cancer (BBC), an aggressive subtype of breast cancer usually lacking estrogen and progesterone receptors, remains difficult to treat. Here, we report the identification of MELK as a novel oncogenic kinase from an in vivo tumorigenesis screen using a kinome-wide open reading frames (ORFs) library. Analysis of clinical data reveals a high level of MELK overexpression in BBC, a feature that is largely dependent on FoxM1, a master mitotic transcription factor that is also found to be highly overexpressed in BBC. Ablation of MELK selectively impairs proliferation of basal-like, but not luminal breast cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, depletion of MELK in BBC cells induces caspase-dependent cell death, preceded by defective mitosis. Finally, we find that Melk is not required for mouse development and physiology. Together, these data indicate that MELK is a normally non-essential kinase, but is critical for BBC and thus represents a promising selective therapeutic target for the most aggressive subtype of breast cancer.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Louis Staudt, National Cancer Institute, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was conducted in accordance with the animal use guidelines from the National Institutes of Health and with protocols (#02-127, #06-034) approved by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Animal Care and Use Committee.
Version history
- Received: October 23, 2013
- Accepted: May 16, 2014
- Accepted Manuscript published: May 20, 2014 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: June 17, 2014 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2014, Wang 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.
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MELK is an oncogenic kinase essential for mitotic progression in basal-like breast cancer cells
eLife 3:e01763.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01763
Further reading
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- Cancer Biology
The Maternal Embryonic Leucine Zipper Kinase (MELK) has been reported to be a genetic dependency in several cancer types. MELK RNAi and small-molecule inhibitors of MELK block the proliferation of various cancer cell lines, and MELK knockdown has been described as particularly effective against the highly-aggressive basal/triple-negative subtype of breast cancer. Based on these preclinical results, the MELK inhibitor OTS167 is currently being tested as a novel chemotherapy agent in several clinical trials. Here, we report that mutagenizing MELK with CRISPR/Cas9 has no effect on the fitness of basal breast cancer cell lines or cell lines from six other cancer types. Cells that harbor null mutations in MELK exhibit wild-type doubling times, cytokinesis, and anchorage-independent growth. Furthermore, MELK-knockout lines remain sensitive to OTS167, suggesting that this drug blocks cell division through an off-target mechanism. In total, our results undermine the rationale for a series of current clinical trials and provide an experimental approach for the use of CRISPR/Cas9 in preclinical target validation that can be broadly applied.
