Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy, and the incidence is rising. 1 There are papillary, follicular and anaplastic types of thyroid cancer, with anaplastic as the most aggressive type.Although thyroid cancer has favorable outcomes with the standard therapy, those advanced that persist or recur are associated with poor prognosis. 2 The molecular carcinogenesis of thyroid cancer has advanced tremendously but specific inhibition of oncogenic pathways did not provide a significant survival benefit in advanced progressive thyroid cancer. 3 Substantial evidence has shown that the changes in cellular energy metabolism, particularly mitochondrial energy metabolism, determine the cancer biological and clinical phenotype. 4,5 Targeting mitochondrial energy metabolism has
AbstractThe role of mitochondria in cancer and mitochondria-targeted therapy has been gaining attention for its effectiveness and selectivity between cancer and normal cells.In line with this notion, our work demonstrates that inducing mitochondrial dysfunction by tigecycline, a FDA-approved antibiotic, selectively targets thyroid cancer and enhances chemosensitivity. We found that tigecycline inhibited proliferation and induced apoptosis in a panel of thyroid cancer cell lines. Consistently, tigecycline inhibited thyroid cancer growth in mice without causing significant toxicity. The combination of tigecycline with paclitaxel achieved greater efficacy than paclitaxel alone in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, tigecycline inhibited mitochondrial respiration and ATP reduction through decreasing mitochondrial membrane potential and inhibiting mitochondrial translation, leading to oxidative stress and damage. In contrast, tigecycline was ineffective in mitochondrial respiration-deficient cells, confirming that tigecycline acts on thyroid cancer via inhibiting mitochondrial respiration. Interestingly, although tigecycline inhibited mitochondrial respiration in both thyroid cancer and normal thyroid cells in a similar manner, tigecycline was more effective in thyroid cancer than normal thyroid cells, suggesting that thyroid cancer cells are more dependent on mitochondrial functions than normal thyroid cells. This was supported by our observations that thyroid cancer cells had higher level of mitochondrial biogenesis compared to normal thyroid cells. Our work is the first to demonstrate that the combination of chemotherapy with tigecycline is a potential sensitizing strategy for thyroid cancer treatment. Our findings also highlight the higher dependence of thyroid cancer cells on mitochondrial functions than normal thyroid cells.
K E Y W O R D Smitochondrial respiration, targeted therapy, thyroid cancer, tigecycline