TY - JOUR AU - Koch, Katharina AU - Hartmann, Rudolf AU - Tsiampali, Julia AU - Uhlmann, Constanze AU - Nickel, Ann-Christin AU - He, Xiaoling AU - Kamp, Marcel A. AU - Sabel, Michael AU - Barker, Roger A. AU - Steiger, Hans-Jakob AU - Hänggi, Daniel AU - Willbold, Dieter AU - Maciaczyk, Jaroslaw AU - Kahlert, Ulf D. TI - A comparative pharmaco-metabolomic study of glutaminase inhibitors in glioma stem-like cells confirms biological effectiveness but reveals differences in target-specificity JO - Cell death discovery VL - 6 IS - 1 SN - 2058-7716 CY - London PB - Nature Publishing Group816700 M1 - FZJ-2020-02312 SP - 20 PY - 2020 AB - Cancer cells upregulate anabolic processes to maintain high rates of cellular turnover. Limiting the supply ofmacromolecular precursors by targeting enzymes involved in biosynthesis is a promising strategy in cancer therapy.Several tumors excessively metabolize glutamine to generate precursors for nonessential amino acids, nucleotides,and lipids, in a process called glutaminolysis. Here we show that pharmacological inhibition of glutaminase (GLS)eradicates glioblastoma stem-like cells (GSCs), a small cell subpopulation in glioblastoma (GBM) responsible for therapyresistance and tumor recurrence. Treatment with small molecule inhibitors compound 968 and CB839 effectivelydiminished cell growth and in vitro clonogenicity of GSC neurosphere cultures. However, our pharmaco-metabolicstudies revealed that only CB839 inhibited GLS enzymatic activity thereby limiting the influx of glutamine derivatesinto the TCA cycle. Nevertheless, the effects of both inhibitors were highly GLS specific, since treatment sensitivitymarkedly correlated with GLS protein expression. Strikingly, we found GLS overexpressed in in vitro GSC models ascompared with neural stem cells (NSC). Moreover, our study demonstrates the usefulness of in vitro pharmaco-metabolomics to score target specificity of compounds thereby refining drug development and risk assessment. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 C6 - pmid:32337072 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000526352700001 DO - DOI:10.1038/s41420-020-0258-3 UR - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/877590 ER -