LIN28B-mediated PI3K/AKT pathway activation promotes metastasis in colorectal cancer models
Alice E. Shin, … , Peter A. Sims, Anil K. Rustgi
Alice E. Shin, … , Peter A. Sims, Anil K. Rustgi
Published January 14, 2025
Citation Information: J Clin Invest. 2025;135(8):e186035. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI186035.
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Research Article Gastroenterology Oncology

LIN28B-mediated PI3K/AKT pathway activation promotes metastasis in colorectal cancer models

Abstract

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains a leading cause of cancer death because of metastatic spread. LIN28B is overexpressed in 30% of CRCs and promotes metastasis, yet its mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we genetically modified CRC cell lines to overexpress LIN28B, resulting in enhanced PI3K/AKT pathway activation and liver metastasis in mice. We developed genetically modified mouse models with constitutively active Pik3ca that form intestinal tumors progressing to liver metastases with an intact immune system, addressing the limitations of previous Pik3ca-mutant models, including long tumor latency, mixed histology, and lack of distant metastases. The PI3Kα-specific inhibitor alpelisib reduced migration and invasion in vitro and metastasis in vivo. We present a comprehensive analysis of vertical inhibition of the PI3K/AKT pathway in CRC using the FDA-approved drugs alpelisib and capivasertib (an AKT inhibitor) in combination with LY2584702 (a ribosomal protein S6 kinase inhibitor) in CRC cell lines and mouse- and patient-derived organoids. Tissue microarrays from patients with CRC verified that LIN28B and PI3K/AKT pathway activation correlate with CRC progression. These findings highlight the critical role of the LIN28B-mediated PI3K/AKT pathway in CRC metastasis, the therapeutic potential of targeted inhibition, and the promise of patient-derived organoids in precision medicine in metastatic CRC.

Authors

Alice E. Shin, Kensuke Sugiura, Secunda W. Kariuki, David A. Cohen, Samuel P. Flashner, Andres J. Klein-Szanto, Noriyuki Nishiwaki, Dechokyab De, Neil Vasan, Joel T. Gabre, Christopher J. Lengner, Peter A. Sims, Anil K. Rustgi

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Figure 8

PI3K/S6K signaling correlates with disease progression in CRC patient samples.

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PI3K/S6K signaling correlates with disease progression in CRC patient sa...
(A) Representative IHC images of LIN28B, p-AKT (Ser473), p-S6K (Thr389/412), and p-RPS6 (Ser235/236) in normal adjacent colon tissue, primary colon tumor, and liver metastases from 60 patients with CRC. Scale bars: 100 μm; scale bars for insets: 10 μm. (B) Quantification of IHC staining scores for LIN28B, p-AKT, p-S6K, and p-RPS6 (n = 60; 1-way ANOVA, mean ± SEM). (C) T-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) plots showing the expression of PIK3CA in all epithelial cells (top) and in T4 stage tumor cells (bottom) from the Human Colon Cancer Atlas single-cell sequencing dataset (c295) comprising 371,223 cells. (D) Dot plot showing scaled mean expression and percentage of cells expressing PIK3CA, MTOR, and RPS6KB1 across different cell clusters (normal colonic epithelial and tumor cells) identified in the Human Colon Cancer Atlas dataset. cE, colonic epithelium. ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001.