Sulfatase 2 Inhibition Sensitizes Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells to Chemotherapy Through Augmentation of Extracellular ATP.

Background: Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death among women worldwide. Patients diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) have limited therapeutic options that produce durable responses. Hence, a diagnosis of TNBC is associated with a poor prognosis compared to other types of breast cancer. As a result, there is a critical need for novel therapies that can deepen and prolong responses.We previously found that chemotherapy causes the release of extracellular adenosine triphosphate (eATP). Augmenting eATP release can boost the response of TNBC cells to chemotherapy and cause increased cell death. However, eATP concentrations are limited by several families of extracellular ATPases, which complicates the design of compounds that attenuate eATP degradation.In this study, we hypothesized that heparan sulfate (HS) would inhibit extracellular ATPases and accentuate chemotherapy-induced cytotoxicity in TNBC by augmenting eATP. HS can be desulfated by sulfatase 1 and 2; sulfatase 2 is consistently highly expressed in a variety of cancers including breast cancer, whereas sulfatase 1 is not. We hypothesized that the sulfatase 2 inhibitor OKN-007 would exacerbate chemotherapy-induced eATP release and TNBC cell death.

Methods: TNBC cell lines and nontumorigenic immortal mammary epithelial cells were treated with paclitaxel in the presence of heparan sodium sulfate and/or OKN-007; eATP content and cell viability were evaluated. In addition, protein and cell surface expression of sulfatases 1 and 2 were determined in all examined cell lines via ELISA, Western blot, and flow cytometry analyses.

Results: Sulfatase 2 was highly expressed in TNBC cell lines and human breast cancer samples but not in immortal mammary epithelial cells and much less so in normal human breast tissue and ductal carcinoma in situ samples. OKN-007 exacerbated chemotherapy-induced eATP release and chemotherapy-induced TNBC cell death. When combined with chemotherapy, OKN-007 attenuated cells with a cancer-initiating cell phenotype.

Conclusions: These results suggest that sulfatase 2 inhibitors in combination with chemotherapy attenuate the viability of TNBC cells more than chemotherapy alone by exacerbating eATP release. These effects, as well as their capacity to attenuate the cancer-initiating cell fraction, may translate into combination therapies for TNBC that induce deeper and more durable responses.