# Chromosomal Instability as a Therapeutic Target in Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER · 2023 · $445,780

## Abstract

Project Summary
 Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is one of the deadliest human malignancies with median survival of < 6
months despite treatment with a combination of surgery, external beam radiation and cytotoxic chemotherapy.
Paclitaxel and docetaxel are cytotoxic drugs that work by stabilizing mitotic spindles and increasing the rate of
chromosomal segregation errors during cell division. Taxanes have shown a modest benefit in patients with
ATC, but even with treatment, patient survival remains very poor. Recently, the combination of dabrafenib and
trametinib have shown efficacy in patients with BRAFV600E mutated tumors, and this combination has been
approved by the FDA for use in patients with this specific mutation. We recently published mutation status of
the largest group of patients with ATC (Pozdeyev N, Clin Cancer Res, 2018). Of 196 patients, 41% had a
BRAF mutation, leaving 59% of patients not eligible for the dabrafenib/trametinib therapy. More effective drugs
and rational synergistic drug combinations are urgently needed for these patients. We have used a novel
functional genomics discovery approach to identify the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) pathway as a key
synergistic lethal vulnerability with taxanes in ATC. We have also shown that ATC and poorly differentiated
thyroid cancer (PDTC) tumors have high levels of critical SAC components, MPS1 and BUBR1. The primary
objective of this application is to study the combination of taxanes with the drugs blocking the SAC pathway for
the treatment of ATC. Our central hypothesis is that the inhibition of the SAC pathway, responsible for the
prevention of chromosomal segregation errors in ATC and PDTC cells, which already have high baseline
chromosomal instability (CIN), will sensitize a vulnerable subset of tumor cells to taxanes and cause massive
aneuploidy incompatible with cell survival. We further predict that the aneuploidy generated by this therapy will
activate the immunosurveillance system, which we will test in an immunocompetent preclinical model. We will
test these hypotheses using in vitro human ATC/PDTC cells lines to elucidate mechanisms of synergy
sensitivity and resistance, validate these findings in orthoptopic xenograft models, and extend these studies
into syngeneic orthotopic models to determine the contribution of immunosurveillance on effectiveness of
therapy. Successful completion of these Aims will determine the preclinical efficacy of combination taxane
therapy and SAC pathway inhibition in ATC and PDTC. These studies will also provide mechanistic insights
that could lead to other novel combination therapies and critical biomarkers for focused clinical trials. If
successful, this work should rapidly lead to clinical trials that will improve survival in these patients who
desperately need better therapies. These studies will likely also inform treatments in other advanced cancers.
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## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10599136
- **Project number:** 5R01CA233546-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER
- **Principal Investigator:** Bryan R. Haugen
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $445,780
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-04-01 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10599136

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10599136, Chromosomal Instability as a Therapeutic Target in Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer (5R01CA233546-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10599136. Licensed CC0.

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