Authors
Lucilla Fabbri, Lucie Lagadec, Eva Guérin, Hélène Lecourt, Dorothée Baille, Laetitia Besse, Cédric Messaoudi, Laurent Désaubry, Hussein Abou-Hamdan, Sévérine Roy, Bérangère Lombard, Damarys Loew, Jean-Yves Scoazec, Caroline Robert, Stéphan Vagner
Published in
EMBO molecular medicine. Jul 20, 2026. Epub Jul 20, 2026.
Abstract
During their inevitable evolution towards acquired resistance to anti-cancer targeted therapies, cancer cells adopt distinct gene expression profiles that allow them to transiently adapt to and tolerate the treatment. Cancer cells surviving therapy can increase their mutation rate, enhancing the likelihood of acquiring resistance-conferring mutations and evolving into resistant cells. Here we show that translational control mediates the adaptive mutability of melanoma drug-tolerant cells by regulating the translation of the error-prone non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) component 53BP1. The specific inhibition of 5'UTR-driven 53BP1 mRNA translation was sufficient to impair NHEJ and mutability. We found that the eIF4A RNA helicase, regulates 53BP1 mRNA translation. Consequently, targeting the eIF4A with two small molecule inhibitors significantly delays the acquisition of resistance to combination of BRAF and MEK inhibitors in BRAFV600-mutant melanoma xenograft models and cell lines by reducing the mutability of drug-tolerant cells. Our results demonstrate that a standard-of-care therapy for melanoma, by engaging non-genetic adaptation driven at the translational level, contributes to the evolution of drug-tolerant melanoma cells toward acquired resistance.
PMID:
42477455
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 21 Jul 2026.
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