Overcoming mutation-based resistance to antiandrogens with rational drug design

Abstract

The second-generation antiandrogen enzalutamide was recently approved for patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer. Despite its success, the duration of response is often limited. For previous antiandrogens, one mechanism of resistance is mutation of the androgen receptor (AR). To prospectively identify AR mutations that might confer resistance to enzalutamide, we performed a reporter-based mutagenesis screen and identified a novel mutation, F876L, which converted enzalutamide into an AR agonist. Ectopic expression of AR F876L rescued the growth inhibition of enzalutamide treatment. Molecular dynamics simulations performed on antiandrogen–AR complexes suggested a mechanism by which the F876L substitution alleviates antagonism through repositioning of the coactivator recruiting helix 12. This model then provided the rationale for a focused chemical screen which, based on existing antiandrogen scaffolds, identified three novel compounds that effectively antagonized AR F876L (and AR WT) to suppress the growth of prostate cancer cells resistant to enzalutamide.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00499.001

eLife digest

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men, and the second most lethal. All stages of prostate cancer depend upon male sex hormones, also known as androgens, to grow because these hormones bind and activate androgen receptors. A class of drugs termed ‘antiandrogens’ can effectively treat prostate cancer because they bind to androgen receptors without activating them, thereby preventing androgens from binding. However, the efficacy of even highly potent antiandrogen drugs, such as enzalutamide is short-lived in many patients, and understanding the biological mechanisms that cause drug resistance is one of the major objectives in translational prostate cancer research.

Resistance can arise through mutations of the androgen receptor that result in the receptor being activated, rather than inhibited, by antiandrogen drugs. However, no such mutations are known yet for enzalutamide, and researchers are keen to understand whether they exist and, if so, to generate new drugs for prostate cancer that overcome them. To identify mutations that may lead to resistance, Balbas et al. designed a new screening method in human prostate cancer cells and showed that androgen receptors with a specific mutation (called F876L) can be activated by enzalutamide. More comprehensive biological studies showed that prostate cancer cells harboring the mutation continued to grow when treated with the drug. Balbas et al. also showed that this mutation can arise spontaneously in human prostate cancer cells treated long term with enzalutamide.

Balbas et al. reasoned that the mutation likely altered the way enzalutamide binds to the androgen receptor, and used computer-guided structural modeling of the complex formed by the receptor and the drug to investigate how this might occur. These studies indicated that the region of the androgen receptor containing the F876L mutation comes into direct contact with the drug, and provided a structural explanation for the loss of inhibition. Because these studies showed how enzalutamide might bind to the androgen receptor, they also suggested ways in which enzalutamide could be chemically modified to restore its inhibitory activity against the mutant receptor.

Balbas et al. then designed and synthesized a set of novel compounds, which the modeling data suggested could act as inhibitors of the mutant receptor. Several of these compounds inhibited the activity of both mutant and wild-type forms of the androgen receptor, and suppressed the growth of both enzalutamide-resistant and nonresistant prostate cancer cells.

The work of Balbas et al. outlines a general screening strategy for the discovery of clinically relevant mutations in cancer genes, and shows how in silico technologies can accelerate drug discovery in the absence of a crystal structure of a protein–drug complex. It also emphasizes how understanding the manner in which a drug binds its target can stimulate rational design of improved drug candidates.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00499.002