Targeting YAP/TAZ-TEAD as a precision therapy approach in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Dysregulation of the Hippo pathway and the consequent activation of its downstream targets, the transcriptional co-activators YAP and TAZ (YAP/TAZ), drives oncogenic transcriptional programs upon binding TEAD transcription factors in multiple human malignancies. The recent development of small molecule TEAD inhibitors (smTEADi) provides an opportunity to therapeutically target Hippo pathway dysregulation in cancer. In this regard, HPV-negative head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) harbor multiple genetic alterations that promote YAP/TAZ hyperactivation, raising the possibility that HNSCC cells might be dependent on YAP/TAZ-TEAD driven oncogenic transcriptional programs. To test this hypothesis, we examined the antitumor activity of the novel smTEADi, SW-682 and genetically encoded TEAD inhibitor peptide (pTEADi) in Cal33 HPV-negative HNSCC cell line-derived xenograft model. To elucidate the transcriptomic changes upon YAP/TAZ-TEAD inhibition, RNA extracted from xenograft tumors treated with SW-682 or pTEADi, as well as control, was subjected to RNA sequencing. Total RNA extracted from xenograft tumor tissues was subjected to paired-end 150bp sequencing on the Illumina NovaSeq6000 sequencer at Novogene Co., Ltd.. Sequencing reads were aligned to GRCh38 human reference genome by STAR v2.7.9 using Gencode v38 annotations. Read count data was generated by RSEM v1.3.1.