Liver-Targeting Class I Selective Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors Potently Suppress Hepatocellular Tumor Growth as Standalone Agents

Dysfunctions in epigenetic regulation play critical roles in tumor development and progression. Histone deacetylases (HDACs) and histone acetyl transferase (HAT) are functionally opposing epigenetic regulators, which control the expression status of tumor suppressor genes. Upregulation of HDAC activities, which results in silencing of tumor suppressor genes and uncontrolled proliferation, predominates in malignant tumors. Inhibition of the deacetylase activity of HDACs is a clinically validated cancer therapy strategy. However, current HDAC inhibitors (HDACi) have elicited limited therapeutic benefit against solid tumors. Here, we disclosed a class of HDACi that are selective for sub-class I HDACs and preferentially accumulate within the normal liver tissue and orthotopically implanted liver tumors. We observed that these compounds possess exquisite on-target effects evidenced by their induction of dose-dependent histone H4 hyperacetylation without perturbation of tubulin acetylation status and G0/G1 cell cycle arrest. Representative compounds 2 and 3a are relatively non-toxic to mice and robustly suppressed tumor growths in an orthotopic model of HCC as standalone agents. Collectively, our results suggest that these compounds may have therapeutic advantage against HCC relative to the current systemic HDACi. This prospect merits further comprehensive preclinical investigations.

Histone deacetylase inhibitors as cancer therapeutics

Cancer cells contain significant alterations in their epigenomic landscape, which several enzyme families reversibly contribute to. One class of epigenetic modifying enzymes is that of histone deacetylases (HDAC), which are receiving considerable scrutiny clinically as a therapeutic target in many cancers. The underlying rationale is that inhibiting HDACs will reverse dysregulated target gene expression by modulating functional histone (or other) acetylation marks. This perspective will discuss a recent paper by Markozashvili and co-workers which appeared in Gene, which indicates that the mechanisms by which HDAC inhibitors (HDACis) alter the epigenetic landscape include widespread alternative effects beyond simply controlling regional epigenetic marks. HDACs are involved in many processes/diseases, and it is not surprising that HDACis have considerable off-target effects, and thus a major effort is being directed toward identification of inhibitors which are selective for HDAC isoforms often uniquely implicated in various cancers. This Perspective will also discuss some representative work with inhibitors targeting individual HDAC classes or isoforms. At present, it is not really clear that isoform-specific HDACis will avoid non-selective effects on other unrecognized activities of HDACs.