105P Discovery of potent and selective PKMYT1 inhibitors
Methods:We employed a tiered experimental approach encompassing cell line panels, isogenic Rb1 manipulated cell line systems, and patient derived xenograft models, stratified by Rb1 status. Results:We demonstrate that co-inhibition of ATR (RP-3500) and PKMYT1 (RP-6306) induces synthetic lethality in Rb1-deficient breast cancers by disrupting both S/G2 and G2/M checkpoints.This leads to replication stress, premature mitotic entry, and accumulation of DNA damage.In vitro, Rb1-deficient breast cancer cells exhibited marked apoptosis and loss of clonogenic survival, whereas Rb1-proficient models remained resistant to combination treatment.Genetic manipulation confirmed this dependency: Rb1 knockdown sensitized resistant models, whereas re-expression conferred protection.In vivo, patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models recapitulated these findings.Rb1-deficient tumors regressed following ATR/PKMYT1 co-inhibition, whereas Rb1-proficient tumors showed only modest responses.Combination therapy was well tolerated without weight loss or measurable toxicity.Biomarker analysis revealed increased H2AX and reduced Ki67 staining exclusively in Rb1-deficient PDX models, underscoring the specificity of this response.Mechanistically, Rb1 loss impaired double-strand DNA repair by attenuating homologous recombination and non-homologous end joining, leading to replication fork collapse, chromosomal instability, and mitotic catastrophe.Proteogenomic analysis identified JNK/p38 stress response pathway activation as a key driver of apoptosis following ATR/PKMYT1 inhibition in Rb1-deficient cells.Clinically, retrospective analysis of stage IV breast cancer datasets revealed that Rb1-low tumors display reduced DNA repair pathway activity in triple-negative and CDK4/6 inhibitor-resistant luminal breast cancers.Conclusions: These results identify Rb1 loss as a predictive biomarker for ATR/ PKMYT1-targeted therapy, offering a potential precision treatment strategy for advanced breast cancers.
Authors
- Matthew J. Walters (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4419-5949)
- Lunda Shen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8438-1482)
- Jeremy Fournier (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3162-3588)
- Manmohan R. Leleti
- Sandra Hodge (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9401-298X)
- Natalie Hill
- S. Bhowmik
- E. Fernandez-Salas
- H. Vishwa Sai
- J. Zhu
- P. Nareddy
- E. Rumpf
- M. Yadav
- C. Ashar
- S. Paladugu
Institutions
- Profectus Biosciences (United States) (US)
- Pulse Biosciences (United States) (US)
- Arcadia Biosciences (United States) (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- ESMO Open
- Published
- 2026-04-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esmoop.2026.106247
- Primary Topic
- PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling in cancer
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00