TPX2 expression promotes sensitivity to dasatinib in breast cancer by activating the YAP transcriptional signaling

Chromosomal instability (CIN) is a hallmark of cancer aggressiveness, providing genetic plasticity and tumor heterogeneity that allows the tumor to evolve and adapt to stress conditions. CIN is considered a cancer therapeutic biomarker because healthy cells do not exhibit CIN. Despite recent efforts to identify therapeutic strategies related to CIN, the results obtained have been very limited. CIN is characterized by a genetic signature where a collection of genes, mostly mitotic regulators, are overexpressed in CIN-positive tumors, providing aggressiveness and poor prognosis. We attempted to identify new therapeutic strategies related to CIN genes by performing a drug screen, using cells that individually express CIN-associated genes in an inducible manner. We find that the overexpression of TPX2 enhances sensitivity to the SRC inhibitor dasatinib due to activation of the YAP pathway. Furthermore, using breast cancer data from the TCGA and a cohort of cancer-derived patient samples, we find that both TPX2 expression and YAP activation are present in a significant percentage of cancer tumor samples, providing poor prognosis, being therefore putative biomarkers for dasatinib therapy.