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The Novel Polyamine Analogue CGC-11093 Enhances the Antimyeloma Activity of Bortezomib

Departments of ¹ Biochemistry, ² Oncology, and ³ Pathology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee; ⁴ Medigen Biosciences, Madison, Wisconsin; ⁵ Department of Oncology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland; ⁶ Progen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Redwood City, California; ⁷ Department of Cancer Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, Florida; ⁸ The Cancer Therapy and Research Center Institute for Drug Development, San Antonio, Texas; and ⁹ The Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio

Requests for reprints: John L. Cleveland, Department of Cancer Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, Scripps-Florida, 5353 Parkside Drive, RE-1, Jupiter, FL 33458. Phone: 561-799-8775; Fax: 561-799-8957; E-mail: jcleve{at}scripps.edu.

Key Words: multiple myeloma • bortezomib • polyamine analog • therapy

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable plasma cell malignancy. The recent successes of the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib in MM therapy have prompted investigations of its efficacy in combination with other anticancer agents. Polyamines play important roles in regulating tumor cell proliferation and angiogenesis and represent an important therapeutic target. CGC-11093 is a novel polyamine analogue that has completed a phase I clinical trial for the treatment of cancer. Here, we report that CGC-11093 selectively augments the in vitro and in vivo antimyeloma activity of bortezomib. Specifically, the combination of CGC-11093 and bortezomib compromised MM viability and clonogenic survival, and increased drug-induced apoptosis over that achieved by either single agent. Xenografts of MM tumors treated with this combination had marked increases in phospho-c-Jun-NH₂-kinase (JNK)-positive cells and apoptosis, and corresponding reductions in tumor burden, tumor vasculature, and the expression of proliferating cell nuclear antigen and the proangiogenic cytokine vascular endothelial growth factor. Furthermore, inhibition of JNK with a pharmacologic inhibitor or by selective knockdown blunted the efficacy of CGC-11093 and bortezomib. Therefore, CGC-11093 enhances the anticancer activity of bortezomib by augmenting JNK-mediated apoptosis and blocking angiogenesis. These findings support the study of the use of the combination of bortezomib and CGC-11093 in MM patients that fail to respond to frontline therapy. [Cancer Res 2008;68(12):4783–90]