A plant alkaloid, veratridine, potentiates cancer chemosensitivity by UBXN2A-dependent inhibition of an oncoprotein, mortalin-2

// Ammara Abdullah 1 , Sanam Sane 1 , Kate A. Branick 1 , Jessica L. Freeling 1 , Hongmin Wang 1 , Dong Zhang 2 , Khosrow Rezvani 1 1 Division of Basic Biomedical Sciences, Sanford School of Medicine, The University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD 57069, USA 2 Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine, New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, NY 11568, USA Correspondence to: Khosrow Rezvani, e-mail: khosrow.rezvani@usd.edu Keywords: veratridine, UBXN2A, p53, mortalin-2, chemotherapy Received: March 10, 2015 Accepted: June 30, 2015 Published: July 11, 2015 ABSTRACT Veratridine (VTD), an alkaloid derived from the Liliaceae plant shows anti-tumor effects; however, its molecular targets have not been thoroughly studied. Using a high-throughput drug screen, we found that VTD enhances transactivation of UBXN2A, resulting in upregulation of UBXN2A in the cytoplasm, where UBXN2A binds and inhibits the oncoprotein mortalin-2 (mot-2). VTD-treated cancer cells undergo cell death in UBXN2A- and mot-2-dependent manners. The cytotoxic function of VTD is grade-dependent, and the combined treatment with a sub-optimal dose of the standard chemotherapy, 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) and etoposide, demonstrated a synergistic effect, resulting in higher therapeutic efficacy. VTD influences the CD44+ stem cells, possibly through UBXN2A-dependent inhibition of mot-2. The VTD-dependent expression of UBXN2A is a potential candidate for designing novel strategies for colon cancer treatment because: 1) In 50% of colon cancer patients, UBXN2A protein levels in tumor tissues are significantly lower than those in the adjacent normal tissues. 2) Cytoplasmic expression of the mot-2 protein is very low in non-cancerous cells; thus, VTD can produce tumor-specific toxicity while normal cells remain intact. 3) Finally, VTD or its modified analogs offer a valuable adjuvant chemotherapy strategy to improve the efficacy of 5-FU-based chemotherapy for colon cancer patients harboring WT-p53.