Redox Phospholipidomics Discovers Pro-ferroptotic Death Signals in A375 Melanoma Cells In Vitro and In Vivo

Authors

Yulia Y Tyurina
Alexandr A Kapralov
Vladimir A Tyurin
Galina Shurin
Andrew A Amoscato
Dhivyaa Rajasundaram
Hua Tian
Yuri L Bunimovich
Yulia Nefedova
William G Herrick
Ralph E Parchment
James H Doroshow
Hulya Bayir
Apurva K Srivastava
Valerian E Kagan

Publication Date

5-1-2023

Journal

Redox Biology

Abstract

Growing cancer cells effectively evade most programs of regulated cell death, particularly apoptosis. This necessitates a search for alternative therapeutic modalities to cause cancer cell's demise, among them - ferroptosis. One of the obstacles to using pro-ferroptotic agents to treat cancer is the lack of adequate biomarkers of ferroptosis. Ferroptosis is accompanied by peroxidation of polyunsaturated species of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) to hydroperoxy- (-OOH) derivatives, which act as death signals. We demonstrate that RSL3-induced death of A375 melanoma cells in vitro was fully preventable by ferrostatin-1, suggesting their high susceptibility to ferroptosis. Treatment of A375 cells with RSL3 caused a significant accumulation of PE-(18:0/20:4-OOH) and PE-(18:0/22:4-OOH), the biomarkers of ferroptosis, as well as oxidatively truncated products - PE-(18:0/hydroxy-8-oxo-oct-6-enoic acid (HOOA) and PC-(18:0/HOOA). A significant suppressive effect of RSL3 on melanoma growth was observed in vivo (utilizing a xenograft model of inoculation of GFP-labeled A375 cells into immune-deficient athymic nude mice). Redox phospholipidomics revealed elevated levels of 18:0/20:4-OOH in RSL3-treated group vs controls. In addition, PE-(18:0/20:4-OOH) species were identified as major contributors to the separation of control and RSL3-treated groups, with the highest variable importance in projection predictive score. Pearson correlation analysis revealed an association between tumor weight and contents of PE-(18:0/20:4-OOH) (r = -0.505), PE-18:0/HOOA (r = -0.547) and PE 16:0-HOOA (r = -0.503). Thus, LC-MS/MS based redox lipidomics is a sensitive and precise approach for the detection and characterization of phospholipid biomarkers of ferroptosis induced in cancer cells by radio- and chemotherapy.

Keywords

Animals, Mice, Humans, Lipid Peroxidation, Cell Death, Mice, Nude, Chromatography, Liquid, Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Oxidation-Reduction, Melanoma, Ferroptosis, Redox lipidomics, Hydroperoxy-phosphatidylethanolamine, Biomarkers, A375 melanoma cells

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Associated Data

PMID: 36870109