Targeting ketone body metabolism in mitigating gemcitabine resistance

Chemotherapy is often combined with surgery for muscle invasive and nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer (BCa). However, 70% of the patients recur within 5 years. Metabolic reprogramming is an emerging hallmark in cancer chemoresistance. Here, we report a gemcitabine resistance mechanism that promotes cancer reprogramming via the metabolic enzyme OXCT1. This mitochondrial enzyme, responsible for the rate-limiting step in β-hydroxybutyrate (βHB) catabolism, was elevated in muscle invasive disease and in patients with chemoresistant BCa. Resistant orthotopic tumors presented an OXCT1-dependent rise in mitochondrial oxygen consumption rate, ATP, and nucleotide biosynthesis. In resistant BCa, knocking out OXCT1 restored gemcitabine sensitivity, and administering the nonmetabolizable βHB enantiomer (S-βHB) only partially restored gemcitabine sensitivity. Suggesting an extrametabolic role for OXCT1, multi-omics analysis of gemcitabine sensitive and resistant cells revealed an OXCT1-dependent signature with the transcriptional repressor OVOL1 as a master regulator of epithelial differentiation. The elevation of OVOL1 target genes was associated with its cytoplasmic translocation and poor prognosis in a cohort of patients with BCa who have been treated with chemotherapy. The KO of OXCT1 restored OVOL1 transcriptional repressive activity by its nuclear translocation. Orthotopic mouse models of BCa supported OXCT1 as a mediator of gemcitabine sensitivity through ketone metabolism and regulating cancer stem cell differentiation.