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LKB1 Is Necessary for Akt-Mediated Phosphorylation of Proapoptotic Proteins

¹ The Winship Cancer Institute and Departments of ² Hematology and Oncology, ³ Radiation Oncology, ⁴ Human Genetics, and ⁵ Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia and ⁶ Tianjin Key Laboratory of Lung Cancer Metastasis and Tumor Environment, Tianjin Lung Cancer Institute, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, People's Republic of China

Requests for reprints: Wei Zhou, Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Building C, Room 4084, 1365 Clifton Road Northeast, Atlanta, GA 30322. Phone: 404-778-2134; Fax: 404-778-5530; E-mail: wzhou2{at}emory.edu.

Key Words: LKB1 • PI3K/Akt signaling • tumor suppressor • apoptosis

LKB1 plays the role of tumor suppressor, opposite to Akt, by negatively regulating mammalian target of rapamycin through the activation of AMP-activated protein kinase and TSC signaling. We have discovered a novel, potentially oncogenic role for LKB1 as a supporter of Akt-mediated phosphorylation of proapoptotic proteins. We found that Akt activation led to increased phosphorylation of FoxO3a at Thr³² in LKB1 wild-type cells but not in LKB1-null cells. Depletion of LKB1 in the cells with wild-type LKB1 resulted in attenuation of that phosphorylation of FoxO3a by activated Akt, whereas the restoration of LKB1 function in LKB1-null cells reestablished Akt-mediated FoxO3a phosphorylation. On expanding our analysis to other Akt targets, using isogenic LKB1 knockdown cell line pairs and a phospho-specific antibody microarray, we observed that there was a requirement for LKB1 in the phosphorylation of other Akt downstream targets, including Ask1 (Ser⁸³), Bad (Ser¹³⁶), FoxO1 (Ser³¹⁹), FoxO4 (Ser¹⁹⁷), and glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3β; Ser⁹). Because the phosphorylation of these sites by Akt suppresses apoptosis, the requirement of LKB1 suggests that LKB1 may have an antiapoptotic role in tumor cells with constitutively active Akt. Indeed, we found that the suppression of LKB1 expression led to apoptosis in three cell lines in which Akt is constitutively active but not in two cell lines without Akt activation. This observation may explain the lack of LKB1 somatic mutations in brain, breast, and colon cancers, where Akt is frequently activated due to mutations in phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, PTEN, or Akt itself. [Cancer Res 2008;68(18):7270–7]