Pirtobrutinib Overcomes Ibrutinib and Venetoclax Resistance in Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Background

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a rare and aggressive B-cell lymphoma characterized by poor prognosis. Although remarkable therapeutic advances have been made by covalent Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibition and CAR T cell therapy, therapeutic resistance inevitably occurs and leads to dismal clinical outcome. Pirtobrutinib (LOXO-305) is a next-generation, highly selective and non-covalent BTK inhibitor. A phase 1/2 BRUIN study showed that pirtobrutinib demonstrated promising efficacy in heavily pretreated MCL patients with or without prior covalent BTK inhibition. Here, we investigated the mechanism of action of pirtobrutinib in MCL cells in vitro and proposed the potential combination therapy in a venetoclax-resistant xenograft model.

Methods

MCL cell proliferation was monitored by trypan blue exclusion assay after 24-, 48- and 72-hour treatment with pirtobrutinib and ibrutinib. We performed Annexin V/PI staining to measure the apoptosis inductive effects. Cell cycle analysis using propidium iodide (PI) DNA staining was conducted to compare cell cycle progression kinetics between pirtobrutinib and ibrutinib. We performed RNAseq analysis in Z138 cells to compare differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between pirtobrutinib and ibrutinib treatment. Western blotting was utilized to detect specific signaling proteins. Mino-venetoclax-R cells were inoculated subcutaneously into NSG mice and used for in vivo drug efficacy determination.

Results

Compared to covalent BTK inhibitor ibrutinib, the novel non-covalent BTK inhibitor pirtobrutinib was more potent in inhibiting MCL cell proliferation in a panel of MCL cell lines, especially in ibrutinib/venetoclax resistant cell lines (pirtobrutinib vs. ibrutinib, p<0.01). Treatment with pirtobrutinib (10μM) for 24 hours induced higher levels of apoptosis than that by ibrutinib in all the MCL cell lines tested (p<0.05), which was also confirmed at the molecular level by stronger caspase-3 activation and PARP cleavage. To understand the mechanism of action, we performed whole transcriptomic profiling by RNAseq analysis using Z138 cells treated with/without pirtobrutinib or ibrutinib. Pirtobrutinib treatment resulted in upregulation of 137 genes and downregulation of 97 genes compared to the ibrutinib treatment (adjusted p<0.05). In addition to the downregulated MYC targets and PI3K/Akt pathway, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed a significant enrichment for G2/M checkpoints and E2F targets signatures (key genes: PLK1, CDKN1A and CCNB1) in pirtobrutinib treated cells. Consistently, follow-up studies showed that γH2AX level was highly increased upon pirtobrutinib treatment. Pirtobrutinib treatment but not ibrutinib treatment resulted in G2/M cell cycle arrest. The blockade of cell cycle progression is positively correlated with decreased protein levels of critical regulators of S and G2/M phase transition such as cyclin B and CDC25C. BTK inhibitor (ibrutinib) in combination with venetoclax has shown great efficacy in preclinical models and in MCL patients. Therefore, here we assessed the in vivo efficacy of pirtobrutinib in combination with venetoclax with side-by-side comparison to ibrutinib & venetoclax in the Mino-venetoclax-R mouse model. Pirtobrutinib & venetoclax combination enhanced the efficacy of pirtobrutinib in restraining the tumor size (p<0.001) in the xenograft model. Notably, this novel combinatorial treatment exerted much higher potency than ibrutinib and venetoclax combination therapy (p<0.001). In addition, the pirtobrutinib & venetoclax combination was well tolerated and did not reduce overall mouse body weights compared with the vehicle treated mice.

Conclusions

Pirtobrutinib overcame both ibrutinib and venetoclax resistance in MCL cells in vitro and in vivo. G2/M checkpoints and E2F targets pathways were significantly enriched in both cases. Pirtobrutinib & venetoclax showed better in vivo efficacy in MCL models than combination of ibrutinib & venetoclax.

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