Cell Death Discovery (May 2023)

Drug-induced lactate confers ferroptosis resistance via p38-SGK1-NEDD4L-dependent upregulation of GPX4 in NSCLC cells

  • Feng Cheng,
  • Jintao Dou,
  • Yi Yang,
  • Shaojie Sun,
  • Ruiqi Chen,
  • Zhijian Zhang,
  • Huijun Wei,
  • Jianhui Li,
  • Zhihao Wu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41420-023-01463-5
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Abstract Ferroptosis is a newly defined non-apoptotic programmed cell death resulting from the accumulation of lipid peroxides. Whether ferroptosis plays any role in chemotherapy remains to be established. Here, we reported that ferroptosis represents a part of the chemotherapeutic drug etoposide-induced cell death response in Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC) cells and adaptive signaling molecule lactate protects Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) from etoposide-induced ferroptosis. Lactate derived from metabolic reprogramming increases the expression of glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4) to promote ferroptosis resistance in NSCLC. Furthermore, we identified E3-ubiquitin ligase NEDD4L as a major regulator of GPX4 stability. Mechanistically, Lactate increases mitochondrial ROS generation and drives activation of the p38-SGK1 pathway, which attenuates the interaction of NEDD4L with GPX4 and subsequent ubiquitination and degradation of GPX4. Our data implicated the role of ferroptosis in chemotherapeutic resistance and identified a novel post-translational regulatory mechanism for the key Ferroptosis mediator GPX4.