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The Lee Lab at Vanderbilt

Pharmacologic Inhibition of ß-catenin With Pyrvinium Inhibits Murine and Human Models of Wilms Tumor.

AUTHORS

Polosukhina DDina , Love H Harold , Moses H Harold , Lee E Ethan , Zent R Roy , Clark P Peter . Oncology Research. 2017 7 10; ().

ABSTRACT

Wilms tumor (WT) is the most common renal malignancy of childhood and the fourth most common pediatric solid malignancyin the United States. While the mechanisms underlying the WT biology are complex, these tumors most often demonstrate activation of the canonical Wnt/ß-catenin pathway. We and others have shown that constitutive activation of ß-catenin restricted to the renal epithelium is sufficient to induce primitive renal epithelial tumors which resemble human WT. Here we demonstrate that pharmacologic inhibition of ß-catenin gene transcription with pyrvinium inhibits tumor growth and metastatic progression in a murine model of WT. Cellular invasion is significantly inhibited in both murine WT-like and human WT cells and is accompanied by downregulation of the oncogenes Myc and Birc5 (survivin). Our studies provide a proof of concept that the canonical Wnt/ß-catenin pathway may be a novel therapeutic target in the management of WT.