Combined cisplatin and aurora inhibitor treatment increase neuroblastoma cell death but surviving cells overproduce BDNF

Drug-resistance to chemotherapics in aggressive neuroblastoma (NB) is characterized by enhanced cell survival mediated by TrkB and its ligand, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF); thus reduction in BDNF levels represent a promising strategy to overcome drug-resistance, but how chemotherapics regulate BDNF is unknown. Here, cisplatin treatment in SK-N-BE neuroblastoma upregulated multiple BDNF transcripts, except exons 5 and 8 variants. Cisplatin increased BDNF mRNA and protein, and enhanced translation of a firefly reporter gene flanked by BDNF 5′UTR exons 1, 2c, 4 or 6 and 3′UTR-long. To block BDNF translation we focused on aurora kinases inhibitors which are proposed as new chemotherapeutics. NB cell survival after 24 h treatment was 43% with cisplatin, and 22% by cisplatin+aurora kinase inhibitor PHA-680632, while the aurora kinases inhibitor alone was less effective; however the combined treatment induced a paradoxical increase of BDNF in surviving cells with strong translational activation of exon6-3′UTR-long transcript, while translation of BDNF transcripts 1, 2C and 4 was suppressed. In conclusion, combined cisplatin and aurora kinase inhibitor treatment increases cell death, but induces BDNF overproduction in surviving cells through an aurora kinase-independent mechanism.