Research Paper Volume 11, Issue 24 pp 12452—12475
Mitochondrial metabolic study guided by proteomics analysis in hepatocellular carcinoma cells surviving long-term incubation with the highest dose of sorafenib
- 1 Department of Pharmacology, Institute of Chinese Integrative Medicine, Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang 050017, Hebei, China
- 2 Department of Pharmacy, Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang 050017, Hebei, China
- 3 Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang 050017, Hebei, China
Received: July 31, 2019 Accepted: November 26, 2019 Published: December 26, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102582How to Cite
Copyright © 2019 Bai et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Sorafenib is the standard first-line systemic therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the low objective response rates in clinical studies suggest the existence of certain HCC cells that are inherently insensitive to sorafenib. To understand the molecular basis of insensitivity of HCC cells to sorafenib, this study developed 3 kinds of insensitive HCC cells through exposure to various concentrations of sorafenib and performed a quantitative proteome analysis of the surviving HepG2 cells. 520 unique proteins were concentration-dependently upregulated by sorafenib. Bioinformatics-assisted analysis of 520 proteins revealed that the metabolic pathways involved in central carbon metabolism were significantly enriched, and 102 mitochondrial proteins, especially components of the electron transport chain (ETC), were incrementally upregulated in the 3 kinds of insensitive cells. Conversely, we identified a rapid holistic inhibitory effect of sorafenib on mitochondrial function by the direct targeting of the complex I-linked electron transport and the uncoupling of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXHPOS) in HCC cells. Core metabolic reprogramming involved in a compensatory upregulation of OXHPOS combined with elevated glycolysis supports the survival of HCC cells under the highest dose of sorafenib treatment. Altogether, our work thus elaborates an ETC inhibitor and unveils the proteomic landscape of metabolic reprogramming in drug insensitivity.