Pharmacologic inhibition of mTOR antagonizes the cytotoxic activity of pemetrexed in non-small cell lung cancer

Pemetrexed, an inhibitor of thymidylate synthase (TS) and additional folate-dependent enzymes, is clinically active in patients suffering from “non-squamous” non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). High expression of TS has been implied as biomarker predictive of resistance to pemetrexed. Against this background, we studied whether inhibition of mTOR could lower expression of TS and thus sensitize NSCLC cells to pemetrexed.

Using squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma NSCLC cell lines, we observed that constitutive TS expression levels failed to correlate with sensitivity to growth inhibition or apoptosis imposed by pemetrexed in vitro. Interestingly, pemetrexed strongly induced TS RNA and protein expression in all cell lines. The allosteric “rapalogue” mTOR inhibitor everolimus suppressed constitutive, but not pemetrexed-induced TS expression. Surprisingly, cotreatment with everolimus protected NSCLC cells against pemetrexed-induced apoptosis. This resulted in increased long-term clonogenic survival of NSCLC cells treated with pemetrexed plus everolimus as compared to pemetrexed alone. No such negative interaction was observed when everolimus was combined with recombinant TRAIL, a proliferation-independent proapoptotic agent.

Rapalogues may suppress the antitumor activity of pemetrexed by slowing cell cycle progression. This should be considered when combining pemetrexed and mTOR inhibitors in NSCLC treatment.