Pharmacodynamic Modeling Identifies Synergistic Interaction Between Chloroquine and Trastuzumab in Refractory HER2- positive Breast Cancer Cells.

Background/aim: Despite improvements in HER2-positive breast cancer (BC) patients' outcomes with trastuzumab, the occurrence of intrinsic or acquired resistance presents a clinical challenge. Here, we quantitatively assess the combinatorial effects of chloroquine, an autophagy inhibitor, with trastuzumab on JIMT-1 cells, a HER2-positive BC cell-line primarily resistant to trastuzumab.

Materials And Methods: The temporal changes in JIMT-1 cellular viability were assessed using the CCK-8 kit, where JIMT-1 cells were exposed for 72-h to trastuzumab (0.007-17.19 μM) or chloroquine (5-50 μM) as single-agents, in combination (trastuzumab: 0.007-0.688 μM; chloroquine: 5-15 μM), or control (no drug). Concentration-response relationships were built for each treatment arm to determine drugs' concentrations inducing 50% of cell-killing (IC50). Cellular pharmacodynamic models were built to characterize the time-trajectory of JIMT-1 cellular viability under each treatment arm. The nature of trastuzumab and chloroquine interaction was quantified by estimating the interaction parameter (Ψ).

Results: The IC50 were estimated at 19.7 and 24.4 μM for trastuzumab and chloroquine. The maximum killing effect was about thrice higher for chloroquine than trastuzumab (0.0405 vs. 0.0125 h), validating chloroquine's superior anti-cancer effect on JIMT-1 cells compared to trastuzumab. The time-delay for chloroquine cell-killing was twice longer than that for trastuzumab (17.7 vs. 7 h), suggesting a chloroquine time-dependent anti-cancer effect. The Ψ was determined at 0.529 (Ψ<1), indicating a synergistic interaction.

Conclusion: This proof-of-concept study on JIMT-1 cells identified chloroquine and trastuzumab synergistic interaction, warranting further in vivo investigations.