Abstract 905: Pterostilbene (PTER) suppresses breast cancer brain metastasis by targeting a c-Met mediated inflammation network

At the late stage of breast cancer, most patients develop metastatic lesions and the brain is one of the major metastatic sites. Brain metastasis profoundly affects the cognitive and sensory function as well as morbidity of patients, and the one year survival rate among these patients remains less than 20%. The result of our newly developed gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA)-based pathway screening indicates that c-Met pathway is highly activated among the patients who developed early brain metastasis. To identify a novel target of c-Met pathway in brain metastasis, we performed the microarray analysis in two brain metastatic cell lines with the expression of doxycycline-inducible sh-cMet. Our results indicate that a group of inflammatory cytokines including IL1b, IL8 and CXCL1 were significantly induced by c-Met activation. Furthermore, we found that IL1b was able to induce the secretion of HGF (hepatocyte growth factor) from tumor associated astrocytes (TAA) which in turn activates c-Met pathway in cancer cells. Our results of endothelial cell tube formation assays also strongly suggest that cMet-induced IL8 and the activation of its receptor, CXCL1, promote tumor angiogenesis which is essential for the metastatic growth of cancer cells. Natural compounds (NC) have been extensively studied for their anti-tumor effects. However, much less studies have been done on NC for the treatment/prevention of brain tumors mainly due to the obstacle of Blood-brain-barrier (BBB) permeability. To identify the NCs that can be used for treating brain metastasis, we performed pathway analysis which only focused on BBB-permeable NC. The results of GSEA indicate that Resveratrol-targeting genes were significantly enriched among those patients who developed brain metastasis compared to metastasis-free patients. Furthermore, we found that the one of derivatives of Resveratrol, Pterostilbene (PTER), showed significantly more potent activity than Resveratrol and suppressed brain metastasis in vitro and in vivo by targeting the c-Met oncogene. These findings suggest that TAA-mediated c-Met activation plays a key role in brain metastasis and that PTER is a potential therapeutic agent to treat brain metastasis by suppressing the c-Met expression. Citation Format: Fei Xing, Yin Liu, Sambad Sharma, Kerui Wu, Kounosuke Watabe. Pterostilbene (PTER) suppresses breast cancer brain metastasis by targeting a c-Met mediated inflammation network. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 905.