Quantitative proteomics and bioinformatics analyses reveal the mechanism of pan-aurora kinase inhibitor tozasertib in neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is the third most common pediatric cancer and is responsible for approximately 15% of all childhood cancer deaths (Maris & Matthay, 1999). In our analysis, we found that poor patient survival with increasing mRNA expression level of AURKA and AURKB in Mycn-amplified neuroblastoma. In the light of this evidence, we were able to find possibilities of existing inhibitors for therapy. According to the following experiments, we found that tozasertib, a pan-Aurora kinase inhibitor, has high therapeutic potential in neuroblastoma treatment. First, we performed in vitro experiments to reveal that tozasertib suppressed cell proliferation in multiple Mycn-amplified neuroblastoma cell lines. Next, we evaluated ex vivo not only in Mycn-amplified neuroblastoma xenograft mouse model but also TH-Mycn transgenic mouse model. The results showed that tozasertib significantly inhibited the tumor growth and prolonged the survival probability in both animal models. Finally, we explored the mechanism of tozasertib-treated tissues in two animal models by iTRAQ proteomic.