A Novel Cytotoxic Mechanism for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells Induced by the Type II Heat-Labile Enterotoxin LT-IIc through Ganglioside Ligation

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which constitutes 10–20 percent of all breast cancers, is aggressive, has high metastatic potential, and carries a poor prognosis due to limited treatment options. LT-IIc, a member of the type II subfamily of ADP-ribosylating—heat-labile enterotoxins that bind to a distinctive set of cell-surface ganglioside receptors—is cytotoxic toward TNBC cell lines, but has no cytotoxic activity for non-transformed breast epithelial cells. Here, primary TNBC cells, isolated from resected human tumors, showed an enhanced cytotoxic response specifically toward LT-IIc, in contrast to other enterotoxins that were tested. MDA-MB-231 cells, a model for TNBC, were used to evaluate potential mechanisms of cytotoxicity by LT-IIc, which induced elevated intracellular cAMP and stimulated the cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) signaling pathway. To dissect the role of ADP-ribosylation, cAMP induction, and ganglioside ligation in the cytotoxic response, MDA-MB-231 cells were exposed to wild-type LT-IIc, the recombinant B-pentamer of LT-IIc that lacks the ADP-ribosylating A polypeptide, or mutants of LT-IIc with an enzymatically inactivated A1-domain. These experiments revealed that the ADP-ribosyltransferase activity of LT-IIc was nonessential for inducing the lethality of MDA-MB-231 cells. In contrast, a mutant LT-IIc with an altered ganglioside binding activity failed to trigger a cytotoxic response in MDA-MB-231 cells. Furthermore, the pharmacological inhibition of ganglioside expression protected MDA-MB-231 cells from the cytotoxic effects of LT-IIc. These data establish that ganglioside ligation, but not the induction of cAMP production nor ADP-ribosyltransferase activity, is essential to initiating the LT-IIc-dependent cell death of MDA-MB-231 cells. These experiments unveiled previously unknown properties of LT-IIc and gangliosides in signal transduction, offering the potential for the targeted treatment of TNBC, an option that is desperately needed.