Inverse agonist of estrogen-related receptor α suppresses the growth of triple negative breast cancer cells through ROS generation and interaction with multiple cell signaling pathways

There is an urgent clinical need for targeted therapy approaches for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. Increasing evidences suggested that the expression of estrogen-related receptor alpha (ERRα) was correlate with unfavorable clinical outcomes of breast cancer patients. We here show that inhibition of ERRα by its inverse agonist XCT-790 can suppress the proliferation, decrease G2/M phases, and induce mitochondrial-related apoptosis of TNBC cells. XCT-790 elevates the proteins related to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress such as ATF4/6, XBT-1 and CHOP. It also increases the expression of growth inhibition related proteins such as p53 and p21. Further, XCT-790 can increase the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in TNBC cells mainly through inhibition of SOD1/2. While ROS scavenger NAC abolishes XCT-790 induced ER-stress and growth arrest. XCT-790 treatment can rapidly activate the signal molecules including ERK1/2, p38-MAPK, JNK, Akt, p65, and IκBα, while NAC attenuates effects of XCT-790 induced phosphorylation of ERK1/2, p38-MAPK and Akt. Further, the inhibitors of ERK1/2, JNK, Akt, and NF-κB attenuate XCT-790 induced ROS generation. These data suggest that AKT/ROS and ERK/ROS positive feedback loops, NF-κB/ROS, and ROS/p38-MAPK, are activated in XCT-790 treated TNBC cells. In vivo experiments show that XCT-790 significantly suppresses the growth of MDA-MB-231 xenograft tumors, which is associated with up regulation of p53, p21, ER-stress related proteins while down regulation of bcl-2. The present discovery makes XCT-790 a promising candidate drug and lays the foundation for future development of ERRα-based therapies for TNBC patients.