Oral Presentation 11th Australian Peptide Conference 2015

A protein-centric view of cancer for studying response to targeted therapies (#4)

Mark Molloy 1 , Christoph Krisp 1 , Robert Parker 1
  1. Australian Proteome Analysis Facility, Dept. Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Mass spectrometry offers an increasingly useful approach to gain a protein-centric view of cancer signaling and progression. For translational cancer research we are interested in predicting and understanding cellular response to targeted therapies. In BRAF cancers (thyroid, melanoma) we used phosphoproteomics to identify activities of specific kinases in response to drug inhibitors and development of drug resistance. This revealed protein kinase CK2 as an important new target, whose inhibition provides highly synergistic anti-proliferative effects with BRAF inhibitors [1].  Basal level protein expression can also be used to predict response of cancer cells to drugs. We applied SWATH-MS to a panel of early passage Stage III melanoma cell lines to show that expression of particular proteins accurately predicts response to MAPK inhibitors independently of genotype. Thus, clinical use of such an approach could be more useful than the current standard of care which is centred on mutational genotype alone. 

  1. [1]Parker et al. Phosphoproteomics of MAPK inhibition in BRAF mutated cells and a role for the lethal synergism of dual BRAF and CK2 inhibition. Mol. Cancer Ther. 2014 13(7):1894-906.