UMMS Affiliation
Department of Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology; UMass Metabolic Network
Publication Date
2017-08-14
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Biochemistry | Cancer Biology | Cell Biology | Cellular and Molecular Physiology | Molecular Biology | Neoplasms
Abstract
Obesity is an established risk factor for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA). Despite recent identification of metabolic alterations in this lethal malignancy, the metabolic dependencies of obesity-associated PDA remain unknown. Here we show that obesity-driven PDA exhibits accelerated growth and a striking transcriptional enrichment for pathways regulating nitrogen metabolism. We find that the mitochondrial form of arginase (ARG2), which hydrolyzes arginine into ornithine and urea, is induced upon obesity, and silencing or loss of ARG2 markedly suppresses PDA. In vivo infusion of (15)N-glutamine in obese mouse models of PDA demonstrates enhanced nitrogen flux into the urea cycle and infusion of (15)N-arginine shows that Arg2 loss causes significant ammonia accumulation that results from the shunting of arginine catabolism into alternative nitrogen repositories. Furthermore, analysis of PDA patient tumors indicates that ARG2 levels correlate with body mass index (BMI). The specific dependency of PDA on ARG2 rather than the principal hepatic enzyme ARG1 opens a therapeutic window for obesity-associated pancreatic cancer.Obesity is an established risk factor for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA). Here the authors show that obesity induces the expression of the mitochondrial form of arginase ARG2 in PDA and that ARG2 silencing or loss results in ammonia accumulation and suppression of obesity-driven PDA tumor growth.
Keywords
Cancer metabolism, Metabolism, Pancreatic cancer
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
DOI of Published Version
10.1038/s41467-017-00331-y
Source
Nat Commun. 2017 Aug 14;8(1):242. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00331-y. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Nature communications
Related Resources
PubMed ID
28808255
Repository Citation
Zaytouni, Tamara; Tsai, Pei-Yun; Hitchcock, Daniel S.; DuBois, Cory D.; Freinkman, Elizaveta; Lin, Lin; Morales-Oyarvide, Vicente; Lenehan, Patrick J.; Wolpin, Brian M.; Mino-Kenudson, Mari; Torres, Eduardo M.; Stylopoulos, Nicholas; Clish, Clary B.; and Kalaany, Nada Y., "Critical role for arginase 2 in obesity-associated pancreatic cancer" (2017). UMass Metabolic Network Publications. 171.
https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/metnet_pubs/171
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Included in
Biochemistry Commons, Cancer Biology Commons, Cell Biology Commons, Cellular and Molecular Physiology Commons, Molecular Biology Commons, Neoplasms Commons