Marie D. Bomm

Massachusetts General Hospital | MGH · Department of Psychiatry

TRAIL-based therapies are of significant clinical interest because of its unique ability to induce apoptosis in cancer cells while sparing normal and untransformed cells. This selective antitumor potential of the TRAIL pathway has been harnessed by development of therapeutics including recombinant (rh)TRAIL and TRAIL-receptor agonist antibodies suc...

The five-year survival rate for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has remained a dismal 9% for approximately 40 years with an urgent need for novel therapeutic interventions. ONC201 is the founding member of the imipridone class, comprised of orally bioavailable small molecules that have shown efficacy in multiple tumor types both in animal m...

ONC201 demonstrated promising activity in patients with advanced endometrial cancer in a Phase I clinical trial. ONC201 activates the integrated stress response (ISR) and upregulates TRAIL and its receptor DR5. We hypothesized ONC201 upregulation of DR5 could sensitize tumors to TRAIL and combination of ONC201 and TRAIL would lead to enhanced cell...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.11814.].

ONC201 was initially identified as an inducer of cell death through the tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) pathway. The compound is currently being tested in patients with hematological malignancies and solid tumors, including those of the breast. We investigated strategies to convert the response of breast cancers to O...

ONC201 was originally discovered as TNF-Related Apoptosis Inducing Ligand (TRAIL)-inducing compound TIC10. ONC201 appears to act as a selective antagonist of the G protein coupled receptor (GPCR) dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2), and as an allosteric agonist of mitochondrial protease caseinolytic protease P (ClpP). Downstream of target engagement, ONC20...

Cellular FADD-like IL-1β-converting enzyme-inhibitory protein (c-FLIP) is a master anti-apoptotic regulator in cancer cells. c-FLIP inhibits caspase 8 activation and suppresses cell apoptosis induced by TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) in malignant cells. Targeting c-FLIP is an attractive strategy for cancer therapy. We previously iden...

ONC201 was initially identified as an inducer of cell death through the tumor necrosis factor related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) pathway. The compound is being tested in patients with a variety of tumor types, including those of the breast. Both triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells and non-TNBC cells are sensitive to ONC201. In a subse...

ONC201 is a well-tolerated, orally active small molecule in the novel imipridone class that has anti-tumorigenic properties in a number of solid tumors, but not in non-neoplastic cells. ONC201 has demonstrated promising activity as a single agent in patients with advanced endometrial cancer in the first-in-human clinical trial with Phase II trials...

ONC201/TIC10 is a promising anticancer agent that upregulates cytotoxic TRAIL pathway signaling in cancer cells. Preliminary clinical data indicates ONC201 induces clinical benefit in a subset of patients with histone H3 K27M glioma, among other tumors. Since H3 K27M mutation reduces levels of H3K27 di- and tri-methylation and in turn alters the ex...

ONC201/TIC10 is a promising anticancer agent that upregulates cytotoxic TRAIL pathway signaling in cancer cells. Preliminary clinical data indicates ONC201 induces clinical benefit in a subset of patients with histone H3 K27M glioma, among other tumors. Since H3 K27M mutation reduces levels of H3K27 di- and tri-methylation and in turn alters the ex...

Cellular FADD-like IL-1β-converting enzyme-inhibitory protein (c-FLIP) is a master anti-apoptotic regulator in cancer cells. c-FLIP inhibits caspase 8 activation and suppresses cell apoptosis induced by TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) in malignant cells. Targeting c-FLIP is an attractive strategy for cancer therapy. We previously iden...

ONC201 is a well-tolerated, orally active small molecule in the novel imipridone class that has anti-tumorigenic properties in a number of solid tumors, but not in non-neoplastic cells. ONC201 has demonstrated promising activity as a single agent in patients with advanced endometrial cancer in the first-in-human clinical trial with Phase II trials...

ONC201 was initially identified as an inducer of cell death through the tumor necrosis factor related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) pathway. The compound is being tested in patients with a variety of tumor types, including those of the breast. Both triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells and non-TNBC cells are sensitive to ONC201. In a subse...

A major goal of drug development is to end up with a safe and effective therapy for a disease such as cancer. We describe our experience with taking the small molecule ONC201/TIC10 from the lab to clinical trials. The path involved a phenotypic drug screen to identify a small molecule that activates a pathway that has been established as cancer spe...

ONC201 is a potent inducer of cancer cell death through the tumor necrosis factor related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) pathway. ONC201 and its structural analogs comprise a novel class known as the imipridones. The compound is being tested clinically against a range of solid tumors and hematological malignancies. We found that both triple nega...

Introduction: Despite decades of focused research efforts, cancer remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is capable of inducing cell death selectively in cancer cells while sparing normal cells. Areas covered: In this review, the authors cover TRA therapy and strategie...

Androgen receptor (AR) signaling plays a key role in prostate cancer progression, and androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is a mainstay clinical treatment regimen for patients with advanced disease. Unfortunately, most prostate cancers eventually become androgen-independent and resistant to ADT with patients progressing to metastatic castration-resi...

ONC201 is a first-in-class, orally active anti-tumor agent that upregulates cytotoxic TRAIL pathway signaling in cancer cells. ONC201 has demonstrated safety and preliminary efficacy in the first-in-human trial where patients were dosed every 3 weeks. We hypothesized that dose-intensification of ONC201 may impact anti-tumor efficacy. We discovered...

ONC201/TIC10 is a first-in-class small molecule inducer of TRAIL that causes early activation of the integrated stress response. Its promising safety profile and broad-spectrum efficacy in vitro have been confirmed in Phase I/II trials in several advanced malignancies. Binding and reporter assays have shown that ONC201 is a selective antagonist of...

Glioblastoma is an aggressive central nervous system tumor with a 5-year-survival rate of less than 10%. Patients diagnosed with the disease are treated with surgery, radiation and temozolomide chemotherapy. Despite survival benefits, patients eventually relapse. There is a need for new treatments with improved efficacy. Imipridone ONC201 is a smal...

Pancreatic cancer is chemo-resistant and metastasizes early with an overall five-year survival of ~8.2%. First-in-class imipridone ONC201 is a small molecule in clinical trials with anti-cancer activity. ONC212, a fluorinated-ONC201 analogue, shows preclinical efficacy in melanoma and hepatocellular-cancer models. We investigated efficacy of ONC201...

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) correlate with recurrence, metastasis and poor survival in clinical studies. Encouraging results from clinical trials of CSC inhibitors have further validated CSCs as therapeutic targets. ONC201 is a first-in-class small molecule imipridone in Phase I/II clinical trials for advanced cancer. We have previously shown that ONC...

Stem cell transcription factor changes identified with Ingenuity pathway analysis for gene expression profiles of HCT116 p53-null cells treated with ONC201 (10 μM) for 48h. Fold change relative to DMSO treated cells. (XLS)

Changes in stem cell-related genes identified with Ingenuity pathway analysis for gene expression profiles of HCT116 p53-null cells treated with ONC201 (10 μM) for 48 h. Fold change relative to DMSO treated cells. (XLS)

Ingenuity pathway analysis for gene expression profiles of RKO cells treated with ONC201 (5 μM) for 48 h. (XLS)

Ingenuity pathway analysis for gene expression profiles of HCT116 cells treated with ONC201 (5 μM) for 18 h and 48 h. (XLS)

List of qRT-PCR primers. (XLSX)

P value and D statistic for correlation of ONC201 efficacy in GDSC screen with pretreatment expression of select CSC-related genes. (XLSX)

Stem cell-related changes in gene expression in RKO wild-type and ONC201-resistant cells treated with ONC201 (5 μM) for 48 h. Fold change relative to DMSO treated cells. (XLSX)

ONC201 targets CSCs in prostate and glioblastoma tumors. qRT-PCR for indicated stem cell-related genes in DMSO/ONC201-treated (5 μM, 24h/48h, n = 3) (A) T98G and (B) U251 cells. * indicates p < 0.02 relative to DMSO. (C) and (D) Western blot for indicated stem cell-related proteins in glioblastoma cells treated with indicated doses of DMSO/ONC201 f...

Anti-cancer small molecule ONC201 upregulates the integrated stress response (ISR) and acts as a dual inactivator of Akt/ERK, leading to TRAIL gene activation. ONC201 is under investigation in multiple clinical trials to treat patients with cancer. Given the unique imipridone core chemical structure of ONC201, we synthesized a series of analogues t...

Breast cancer is a major cause of cancer-related death. TRAIL has been of interest as a cancer therapeutic, but only a subset of triple negative breast cancers (TNBC) is sensitive to TRAIL. The small molecule ONC201 induces expression of TRAIL and its receptor DR5. ONC201 has entered clinical trials in advanced cancers. Here we show that ONC201 is...

ONC201 is the founding member of a novel class of anti-cancer compounds called imipridones that is currently in Phase II clinical trials in multiple advanced cancers. Since the discovery of ONC201 as a p53-independent inducer of TRAIL gene transcription, preclinical studies have determined that ONC201 has anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effect...