Critical cancer pathways often cannot be targeted because of limited efficiency crossing cell membranes. Here we report the development of a Salmonella-based intracellular delivery system to address this challenge. We engineer genetic circuits that (1) activate the regulator flhDC to drive invasion and (2) induce lysis to release proteins into tumor cells. Released protein drugs diffuse from Salmonella containing vacuoles into the cellular cytoplasm where they interact with their therapeutic targets. Control of invasion with flhDC increases delivery over 500 times. The autonomous triggering of lysis after invasion makes the platform self-limiting and prevents drug release in healthy organs. Bacterial delivery of constitutively active caspase-3 blocks the growth of hepatocellular carcinoma and lung metastases, and increases survival in mice. This success in targeted killing of cancer cells provides critical evidence that this approach will be applicable to a wide range of protein drugs for the treatment of solid tumors.

It is reasonably well understood how the initiation of translation is controlled by reversible phosphorylation of the eukaryotic translation initiation factors eIF2α, eIF2Bϵ and eIF4E. Other initiation factors, including eIF2β, are also established phosphoproteins but the physiological impact of their phosphorylation is not known. Using a sequence homology search we found that the central region of eIF2β contains a putative PP1-(protein phosphatase-1) binding RVxF-motif. The predicted eIF2β-PP1 interaction was confirmed by PP1 binding and co-immunoprecipitation assays on cell lysates as well as with the purified components. Site-directed mutagenesis showed that eIF2β contains, in addition to an RVxF-motif, at least one other PP1-binding site in its C-terminal half. eIF2β functioned as an inhibitor for the dephosphorylation of glycogen phosphorylase and Ser51of eIF2α by PP1, but did not affect the dephosphorylation of Ser464 of eIF2Bϵ by this phosphatase. Strikingly, eIF2β emerged as an activator of its own dephosphorylation (Ser2, Ser67, Ser218) by associated PP1, since the substrate quality of eIF2β was decreased by the mere mutation of its RVxF-motif. These results make eIF2β an attractive candidate substrate for associated PP1 in vivo. The overexpression of wild-type eIF2β or eIF2β with a mutated RVxF-motif did not differentially affect the rate of translation, indicating that the binding of PP1 is not rate-limiting for translation under basal conditions.

Nuclear Inhibitor of PP1 (NIPP1) is a conserved regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase PP1. The selective deletion of NIPP1 in mouse liver parenchymal cells or skin epidermal cells culminates in a late-onset hyperproliferation of a subset of resident progenitor cells. Although a hyperplastic phenotype is usually tumor promoting, we show here that the absence of NIPP1 conferred a strong resistance to chemically induced hepatocellular or skin carcinoma. The ablation of NIPP1 did not affect the metabolism of the administered mutagens (diethylnitrosamine or 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene), but reduced the conversion of mutagen-induced covalent DNA modifications into cancer-initiating mutations. This reduced sensitivity to mutagens correlated with an enhanced DNA-damage response and an augmented expression of rate-limiting DNA-repair proteins (MGMT in liver, XPD and XPG in skin), hinting at an increased DNA-repair capacity. Our data identify NIPP1 as a repressor of DNA repair and as a promising target for novel cancer prevention and treatment therapies.

The ubiquitously expressed nuclear protein NIPP1 (also known as PPP1R8) recruits phosphoproteins for regulated dephosphorylation by the associated protein phosphatase PP1. To bypass the PP1 titration artifacts seen upon NIPP1 overexpression, we have engineered covalently linked fusions of PP1 and NIPP1, and demonstrate their potential to selectively explore the function of the PP1:NIPP1 holoenzyme. By using inducible stable cell lines, we show that PP1–NIPP1 fusions cause replication stress in a manner that requires both PP1 activity and substrate recruitment via the ForkHead Associated domain of NIPP1. More specifically, PP1–NIPP1 expression resulted in the build up of RNA–DNA hybrids (R-loops), enhanced chromatin compaction and a diminished repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), culminating in the accumulation of DSBs. These effects were associated with a reduced expression of DNA damage signaling and repair proteins. Our data disclose a key role for dephosphorylation of PP1:NIPP1 substrates in setting the threshold for DNA repair, and indicate that activators of this phosphatase hold therapeutic potential as sensitizers for DNA-damaging agents.