GLUL (Glutamate-Ammonia Ligase)

In vivo, targeting FGF17 was shown to synergistically enhance cisplatin antitumor activity and reverse the EMT phenotype...Targeted intervention of the pathway reverses malignant phenotypes and enhances chemosensitivity. These findings highlight FGF17 as a potential therapeutic target for NSCLC and provide new insights into tumor metabolism and EMT, thereby may paving the way for novel combination therapies.

We demonstrate unique metabolic dependency of β-catenin-mutated HCCs on GS in tumor cells which is diverted to macrophages upon GS elimination in tumor cells. This adaptation alters macrophage metabolism and function leading to compromised immunosurveillance and greater tumor burden. Our study reveals a metabolic dynamic between HCC cells and macrophages with impact on tumor biology.

Estrogen-activated GPER in CAFs enhances GLUL and LDHB expression via the cAMP/PKA/CREB signalling, facilitating glutamine production and utilization. Microenvironmental GPER-induced glutamine serves as a crucial mediator of metabolic coupling between CAFs and TNBC cells, boosting tumour progression by enhancing mitochondrial function. Targeting the glutamine metabolic coupling triggered by estrogen/GPER/GLUL signalling in CAFs is a promising therapeutic strategy for TNBC treatment.

Furthermore, we found that YTHDC1 was also important in inducing GLUL expression, and MYC was the upstream mediator of METTL16 to increase its transcriptional activation. Our study revealed new mechanism of metal carcinogenesis and cancer development.

In glutamine-deficient medium, the mRNA expression of glutamine synthetase is increased, which could be related to glutamine addiction in cells. In addition, low-glutamyl medium increased the P-AMPKα protein level in TET2-knockdown HL-60 cells.

GLUL protein expression was correlated with that of N-Cadherin, and could be the independent prognostic factor in gastric cancer. Our findings reveal that GLUL stabilizes N-Cadherin by antagonizing β-Catenin to inhibit the progress of gastric cancer.

Our studies demonstrated the efficacy of RNAi-mediated inhibition of CTNNB1 for β-catenin-mutated HCC and provide strong preclinical evidence to support clinical translation as monotherapy as well as in combination with other treatments.

See also Figure 1(Fig. 1).

Our study developed and reported FH-NDs as nanocarriers for V9302 and siGLUL, demonstrating that FH-V9302-siGLUL-NDs have potential bright future applications for integrated diagnostic therapy. Graphical Abstract.