Decrease of Intracellular Glutamine by STF-62247 Results in the Accumulation of Lipid Droplets in von Hippel-Lindau Deficient Cells

Kidney cancer is one of the top ten cancer diagnosed worldwide and its incidence has increased the last 20 years. Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (ccRCC) are characterized by mutations that inactivate the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) tumor suppressor gene and evidence indicated alterations in metabolic pathways, particularly in glutamine metabolism. We previously identified a small molecule, STF-62247, which target VHL-deficient renal tumors by affecting late-stages of autophagy and lysosomal signaling. In this study, we investigated ccRCC metabolism in VHL-deficient and proficient cells exposed to the small molecule. Metabolomics profiling using 1H NMR demonstrated that STF-62247 increases levels of glucose, pyruvate, glycerol 3-phosphate while glutamate, asparagine, and glutathione significantly decreased. Diminution of glutamate and glutamine was further investigated using mass spectrometry, western blot analyses, enzymatic activities, and viability assays. We found that expression of SLC1A5 increases in VHL-deficient cells treated with STF-62247, possibly to stimulate glutamine uptake intracellularly to counteract the diminution of this amino acid. However, exogenous addition of glutamine was not able to rescue cell viability induced by the small molecule. Instead, our results showed that VHL-deficient cells utilize glutamine to produce fatty acid in response to STF-62247. Surprisingly, this occurs through oxidative phosphorylation in STF-treated cells while control cells use reductive carboxylation to sustain lipogenesis. We also demonstrated that STF-62247 stimulated expression of stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD1) and peripilin2 (PLIN2) to generate accumulation of lipid droplets in VHL-deficient cells. Moreover, the carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A (CPT1A), which control the entry of fatty acid into mitochondria for β-oxidation, also increased in response to STF-62247. CPT1A overexpression in ccRCC is known to limit tumor growth. Together, our results demonstrated that STF-62247 modulates cellular metabolism of glutamine, an amino acid involved in the autophagy-lysosome process, to support lipogenesis, which could be implicated in the signaling driving to cell death.