Glutamine antagonism suppresses tumor growth in adrenocortical carcinoma through inhibition of de novo nucleotide biosynthesis

Glutamine antagonism suppresses tumor growth in adrenocortical carcinoma through inhibition of de novo nucleotide biosynthesis | bioRxiv /* */ /* */ <!-- <!-- /*! * yepnope1.5.4 * (c) WTFPL, GPLv2 */ (function(a,b,c){function d(a){return"[object Function]"==o.call(a)}function e(a){return"string"==typeof a}function f(){}function g(a){return!a||"loaded"==a||"complete"==a||"uninitialized"==a}function h(){var a=p.shift();q=1,a?a.t?m(function(){("c"==a.t?B.injectCss:B.injectJs)(a.s,0,a.a,a.x,a.e,1)},0):(a(),h()):q=0}function i(a,c,d,e,f,i,j){function k(b){if(!o&&g(l.readyState)&&(u.r=o=1,!q&&h(),l.onload=l.onreadystatechange=null,b)){"img"!=a&&m(function(){t.removeChild(l)},50);for(var d in y[c])y[c].hasOwnProperty(d)&&y[c][d].onload()}}var j=j||B.errorTimeout,l=b.createElement(a),o=0,r=0,u={t:d,s:c,e:f,a:i,x:j};1===y[c]&&(r=1,y[c]=[]),"object"==a?l.data=c:(l.src=c,l.type=a),l.width=l.height="0",l.onerror=l.onload=l.onreadystatechange=function(){k.call(this,r)},p.splice(e,0,u),"img"!=a&&(r||2===y[c]?(t.insertBefore(l,s?null:n),m(k,j)):y[c].push(l))}function j(a,b,c,d,f){return q=0,b=b||"j",e(a)?i("c"==b?v:u,a,b,this.i++,c,d,f):(p.splice(this.i++,0,a),1==p.length&&h()),this}function k(){var a=B;return a.loader={load:j,i:0},a}var l=b.documentElement,m=a.setTimeout,n=b.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],o={}.toString,p=[],q=0,r="MozAppearance"in l.style,s=r&&!!b.createRange().compareNode,t=s?l:n.parentNode,l=a.opera&&"[object Opera]"==o.call(a.opera),l=!!b.attachEvent&&!l,u=r?"object":l?"script":"img",v=l?"script":u,w=Array.isArray||function(a){return"[object Array]"==o.call(a)},x=[],y={},z={timeout:function(a,b){return b.length&&(a.timeout=b[0]),a}},A,B;B=function(a){function b(a){var a=a.split("!"),b=x.length,c=a.pop(),d=a.length,c={url:c,origUrl:c,prefixes:a},e,f,g;for(f=0;f<d;f++)g=a[f].split("="),(e=z[g.shift()])&&(c=e(c,g));for(f=0;f<b;f++)c=x[f](c);return c}function g(a,e,f,g,h){var i=b(a),j=i.autoCallback;i.url.split(".").pop().split("?").shift(),i.bypass||(e&&(e=d(e)?e:e[a]||e[g]||e[a.split("/").pop().split("?")[0]]),i.instead?i.instead(a,e,f,g,h):(y[i.url]?i.noexec=!0:y[i.url]=1,f.load(i.url,i.forceCSS||!i.forceJS&&"css"==i.url.split(".").pop().split("?").shift()?"c":c,i.noexec,i.attrs,i.timeout),(d(e)||d(j))&&f.load(function(){k(),e&&e(i.origUrl,h,g),j&&j(i.origUrl,h,g),y[i.url]=2})))}function h(a,b){function c(a,c){if(a){if(e(a))c||(j=function(){var a=[].slice.call(arguments);k.apply(this,a),l()}),g(a,j,b,0,h);else if(Object(a)===a)for(n in m=function(){var b=0,c;for(c in a)a.hasOwnProperty(c)&&b++;return b}(),a)a.hasOwnProperty(n)&&(!c&&!--m&&(d(j)?j=function(){var a=[].slice.call(arguments);k.apply(this,a),l()}:j[n]=function(a){return function(){var b=[].slice.call(arguments);a&&a.apply(this,b),l()}}(k[n])),g(a[n],j,b,n,h))}else!c&&l()}var h=!!a.test,i=a.load||a.both,j=a.callback||f,k=j,l=a.complete||f,m,n;c(h?a.yep:a.nope,!!i),i&&c(i)}var i,j,l=this.yepnope.loader;if(e(a))g(a,0,l,0);else if(w(a))for(i=0;i (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];var j=d.createElement(s);var dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.src='//www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;j.type='text/javascript';j.async=true;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-M677548'); Skip to main content Home About Submit ALERTS / RSS Search for this keyword Advanced Search New Results Glutamine antagonism suppresses tumor growth in adrenocortical carcinoma through inhibition of de novo nucleotide biosynthesis Vasileios Chortis , Kleiton Silva Borges , Cong-Hui Yao , Claudio Ribeiro , Luis Fernando Nagano , Mesut Berber , Alessandro Prete , Lukáš Najdekr , Michail E. Klontzas , Andris Jankevics , Pedro Vendramini , Jean Lucas Kremer , Liam Kelley , Sathuwarman Raveenthiraraj , Stylianos Tsagarakis , Magdalena Macech , Ivana D. Pupovac , Thomas G Papathomas , Betul Haykir , Catherine Winder , Marcus Quinkler , M. Conall Dennedy , Grethe Å. Ueland , Felix Beuschlein , Antoine Tabarin , View ORCID Profile Martin Fassnacht , Angela E. Taylor , Darko Kastelan , Urszula Ambroziak , Dimitra A. Vassiliadi , Katja Kiseljak-Vassiliades , Irina Bancos , View ORCID Profile Diana L. Carlone , Warwick B. Dunn , Wiebke Arlt , Marcia C. Haigis , David T. Breault doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.28.674326 Vasileios Chortis 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA 3 Department of Metabolism and Systems Science, School of Medical Sciences, College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK 4 Department of Endocrinology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust , Birmingham, UK Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site For correspondence: v.chortis{at}bham.ac.uk david.breault{at}childrens.harvard.edu Kleiton Silva Borges 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Cong-Hui Yao 5 Department of Cell Biology, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Claudio Ribeiro 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Luis Fernando Nagano 6 Department of Genetics, Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo , Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Mesut Berber 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Alessandro Prete 3 Department of Metabolism and Systems Science, School of Medical Sciences, College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK 4 Department of Endocrinology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust , Birmingham, UK 7 National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre , Birmingham, UK Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Lukáš Najdekr 8 Phenome Centre Birmingham, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Michail E. Klontzas 9 Artificial Intelligence and Translational Imaging (ATI) Lab, Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, University of Crete , Heraklion, Greece Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Andris Jankevics 8 Phenome Centre Birmingham, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Pedro Vendramini 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Jean Lucas Kremer 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Liam Kelley 5 Department of Cell Biology, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Sathuwarman Raveenthiraraj 10 Division of Newborn Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Stylianos Tsagarakis 11 Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Evangelismos Hospital , Athens, Greece Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Magdalena Macech 12 Department of Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, Medical University of Warsaw , Warsaw, Poland Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Ivana D. Pupovac 13 Department of Endocrinology, University Hospital Centre Zagreb , Zagreb, Croatia Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Thomas G Papathomas 3 Department of Metabolism and Systems Science, School of Medical Sciences, College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK 14 Department of Clinical Pathology , Vestre Viken HF , Norway Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Betul Haykir 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Catherine Winder 8 Phenome Centre Birmingham, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Marcus Quinkler 15 Endocrinology in Charlottenburg , Berlin, Germany Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site M. Conall Dennedy 16 Department of Medicine, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, University of Medicine and Health Sciences , Dublin, Republic of Ireland Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Grethe Å. Ueland 17 Department of Med icine, section of Endocrinology, Haukeland University Hospital , Bergen, Norway Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Felix Beuschlein 18 Klinik für Endokrinologie, Diabetologie und Klinische Ernährung, Universitäts-Spital Zürich (USZ) und Universität Zürich (UZH) , Zurich, Switzerland 19 The LOOP Zurich - Medical Research Center , Zurich, Switzerland 20 Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik IV, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München , Munich, Germany Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Antoine Tabarin 21 Service d’Endocrinologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Hopital du Haut Leveque , Pessac, France Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Martin Fassnacht 22 Department of Internal Medicine I, Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes, University Hospital, University of Würzburg , Würzburg, Germany Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site ORCID record for Martin Fassnacht Angela E. Taylor 3 Department of Metabolism and Systems Science, School of Medical Sciences, College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK 4 Department of Endocrinology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust , Birmingham, UK Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Darko Kastelan 13 Department of Endocrinology, University Hospital Centre Zagreb , Zagreb, Croatia Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Urszula Ambroziak 12 Department of Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, Medical University of Warsaw , Warsaw, Poland Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Dimitra A. Vassiliadi 11 Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Evangelismos Hospital , Athens, Greece Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Katja Kiseljak-Vassiliades 23 Rocky Mountain Regional Veterans Affairs Medical Center , Aurora, CO 80045, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Irina Bancos 24 Division of Endocrin ology, Metabolism, Diabetes and Nutrition, Department of In ternal Medicine, Mayo Clinic , Rochester, Minnesota, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Diana L. Carlone 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA 25 Harvard Stem Cell Institute , Cambridge, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site ORCID record for Diana L. Carlone Warwick B. Dunn 8 Phenome Centre Birmingham, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK 26 Centre for Metabolomics Research, Biochemistry, Cell and Systems Biology, Institute of Systems, Molecular, and Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool , Liverpool, L69 7ZB, UK Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Wiebke Arlt 27 Medical Research Council Laboratory of Medical Sciences , London, UK 28 Institute of Clinical Sciences, Imperial College London , London, UK Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site Marcia C. Haigis 5 Department of Cell Biology, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site David T. Breault 1 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital , Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, USA 25 Harvard Stem Cell Institute , Cambridge, MA, USA Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site For correspondence: v.chortis{at}bham.ac.uk david.breault{at}childrens.harvard.edu Abstract Full Text Info/History Metrics Supplementary material Preview PDF Abstract Dysregulation of cellular metabolism is a hallmark of cancer, which remains poorly understood in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). Here, we dissected ACC metabolism by integrating transcriptional profiling from human and mouse ACC, targeted tissue metabolomics from a mouse ACC model, and untargeted serum metabolomics from a large patient cohort, providing cross-species validation of metabolic rewiring in ACC. This study revealed global metabolic dysregulation, involving glutamine-dependent pathways such as non-essential amino-acid and hexosamine biosynthesis, nucleotide metabolism, and glutathione biosynthesis, suggesting glutamine catabolism is a critical metabolic vulnerability in ACC. Treatment with glutamine antagonists 6-Diazo-5-Oxo-L-Norleucine (DON) and JHU-083 elicited robust anti-tumor responses. Mechanistic studies revealed DON’s anti-tumor effect was primarily driven by selective inhibition of glutamine-fueled de novo nucleotide biosynthesis. Additionally, DON led to DNA damage, which yielded potent synergism with inhibition of the DNA damage response pathway. Collectively, this work highlights glutamine metabolism as a central metabolic dependency and therapeutic target in ACC. Highlights Mouse and human ACC share conserved transcriptional–metabolic programs, revealing Gln metabolism as a central, targetable vulnerability. Targeted tissue metabolomic analysis in a mouse model of ACC validates dysregulation in Gln-dependent metabolic pathways. Targeting of Gln metabolism with JHU-083 (6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine (DON) pro-drug) achieves marked inhibition of tumor growth in vivo . High expression of Gln-metabolizing genes mediating de novo nucleotide biosynthesis is associated with poor prognosis in ACC. DON drives nucleotide depletion and DNA damage, leading to potent synergy with inhibition of the DNA damage response. Untargeted serum metabolomic analysis in a large cohort of patients with adrenal tumors demonstrates dysregulation of Gln and nucleotide metabolism in ACC. Introduction Adrenocortical Carcinoma (ACC) is a rare and aggressive malignancy, originating from the adrenal cortex. Most patients present with, or develop, metastatic disease; for such patients, there are no effective medical treatments and overall survival remains poor with a median survival of less than 15 months with cytotoxic chemotherapy 1 , 2 . Despite considerable progress in understanding the molecular biology of ACC 3 , 4 , no effective targeted treatments have yet emerged. Therefore, there is a critical unmet clinical need to develop effective medical treatments for patients with inoperable tumors. Over the last decade, seminal studies have characterized the molecular landscape of ACC, identifying molecular clusters associated with distinct clinical outcomes 3 - 5 . This work demonstrated that constitutive activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway and cell cycle dysregulation due to TP53/RB1 loss are the two most common driver events in ACC, and are most prevalent in patients with poor prognosis. Notably, concurrent alterations in both pathways are observed in up to 30% of ACC cases 6 . Building on these findings, we recently developed a genetically engineered mouse model of ACC (BPCre), which combines Wnt/β-catenin activation with p53 loss 7 . This model faithfully recapitulates major features of advanced ACC, including metastasis and active steroidogenesis as well as epigenetic dysregulation 7 - 9 , which accounts for the majority of patients with metastatic disease. Dysregulation of cellular metabolism is recognized as a hallmark of cancer 10 , 11 , which supports cancer cells’ specific metabolic needs, including the rapid generation of biomass and energy, and a robust antioxidant defence system. Despite ACC’s unique metabolic trait as an actively steroidogenic tumor, there is limited understanding of how ACC tumors rewire their metabolic network and what diagnostic or therapeutic opportunities this aspect of ACC biology may present. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of metabolic dysregulation in ACC by integrating transcriptional profiling from human and mouse ACC, targeted tissue metabolomics from a mouse model of ACC, and untargeted serum metabolomics from a large cohort of patients with adrenal tumors, achieving cross-species validation of metabolic rewiring in ACC. These findings reveal dysregulation in pathways supporting non-essential amino-acid and nucleotide biosynthesis, hexosamine biosynthesis, and antioxidant production, all of which are heavily dependent on glutamine (Gln) as a key metabolic substrate. Given Gln’s central role in fueling anabolic and redox-supporting processes, we used the Gln antagonist 6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine (DON), and its recently developed tumor-selective pro-drug JHU-083 12 - 14 , to target this putative metabolic dependency in models of ACC. We demonstrate that Gln antagonism is highly effective against ACC using in vitro and in vivo pre-clinical models. Furthermore, we show that DON’s anti-tumor activity against ACC is specifically contingent on disruption of Gln’s role in de novo nucleotide biosynthesis, a process that is up-regulated in the most aggressive human ACCs. Moreover, we discovered that DON-driven nucleotide depletion leads to DNA damage, resulting in potent synergism with inhibition of the DNA damage response pathway. Consistent with these findings, untargeted serum metabolomics from patients with adrenal tumors identified key changes in nucleotide and amino-acid homeostasis in ACC. These pre-clinical findings reveal Gln antagonism as a promising new therapeutic target for this aggressive cancer. Results Cross-species analysis reveals conserved transcriptional-metabolic programs in ACC To identify actionable metabolic vulnerabilities in ACC, we sought to identify common up-regulated metabolic programs utilized by mouse and human ACC. To achieve this, we transcriptionally profiled our recently developed BPCre genetically engineered mouse model of ACC 7 to identify dysregulated metabolic pathways and compared these with pathways also dysregulated in human ACC. First, we performed bulk RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) on BPCre tumors ( n = 7 mice, 5 female and 2 male mice, aged 9-12 months) and control mouse adrenals without mutations ( n = 6 mice, all female, aged 5-11 months). Then, we analyzed bulk RNA-seq data from human ACC tumors using the TCGA-ACC database ( n = 79) 3 and normal human adrenals from the GTEx database ( n = 295) 15 ( Fig. 1a ). We focused on the expression of 2,754 defined metabolic genes encoding metabolic enzymes and transporters, using an unbiased, standardized transcriptomic approach to identify uniquely dysregulated tumor pathways 16 - 18 . Comparison of mouse and human ACC tumors revealed a 68% overlap in up-regulated metabolic pathways and a 75% overlap in down-regulated metabolic pathways ( Fig. 1b , Suppl. Fig. 1a, Suppl. Tables 1-2 ), underscoring the strong conservation of transcriptional–metabolic programs between species in ACC. Strikingly, all 15 of the most significantly up-regulated pathways in mouse tumors were also up-regulated in human tumors ( Fig. 1c , Suppl. Table 1 ), revealing a conserved metabolic signature. Download figure Open in new tab Fig. 1: Cross-species transcriptomic analysis of metabolic reprogramming in ACC. a Schematic overview of cross-species transcriptomic analysis of metabolic pathways in ACC. b Venn diagrams showing overlap between significantly (FDR<0.05) up-regulated and down-regulated metabolic pathways in mouse (BPCre) and human ACC tumors. Numbers refer to dysregulated pathways. c Top 15 most significantly up-regulated pathways in mouse ACC; all pathways are also significantly up-regulated in human ACC (TCGA/GTEx samples). d Schematic overview of Gln metabolism. α-KG: α-ketoglutarate, Asp: aspartate, ATs: aminotransferases, NADH: reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, OAA: oxaloacetate. Dysregulated purine and pyrimidine metabolism was a prominent feature in this analysis, with up-regulation of several genes involved in de novo biosynthesis (a Gln-dependent multi-step process synthesising nucleotides from basic precursors) and salvage biosynthesis (mediating nucleotide recycling) ( Suppl. Fig. 1b-c ). Interestingly, amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism ( Suppl. Fig. 2a ), N-glycan biosynthesis, and glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis were all among the most up-regulated pathways, consistent with an increased requirement for activated sugar donors to support protein glycosylation and glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis. Taken together, these prominent changes indicate an increased demand for Gln, an essential nitrogen donor to both de novo nucleotide biosynthesis and amino sugar (hexosamine) biosynthesis ( Fig. 1d ). Additional indications of an increased demand for Gln included i) an up-regulation of transamidases channeling Gln-derived nitrogen to aspartate and asparagine biosynthesis ( GOT2 , ASNS ) in both species ( Suppl. Table 1-2 ) and ii) extensive dysregulation of glutathione metabolism, a major Gln-dependent antioxidant system ( Suppl. Fig. 2b ). One-carbon metabolism, encompassing the folate cycle and serine/glycine metabolism, was also prominently up-regulated, further supporting nucleotide synthesis and redox homeostasis. Overall, this cross-species analysis revealed extensive rewiring of Gln and one-carbon metabolism to support nucleotide and protein biosynthesis, redox balance, and protein glycosylation. Gln-dependent metabolic pathways are dysregulated in mouse ACC To quantify tumor-intrinsic metabolic alterations and to validate the functional consequences of the transcriptional alterations observed by RNA-seq, we performed targeted tissue metabolomics in BPCre tumors from both sexes compared with age-matched control adrenals (lacking mutations), as well as adrenals from BPCre mice prior to tumor formation (BPCre-Pre) ( Fig. 2a ) 7 . Targeted polar metabolomic analysis by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), using a library that provides a representative cross-section of core carbon and nitrogen-utilising metabolic pathways, confirmed extensive metabolic rewiring involving key programmes highlighted by the transcriptomic analysis ( Fig. 2b ). We observed a robust increase in the Gln-dependent amino-acids glutamate, aspartate, proline and ornithine, as well as the major antioxidant glutathione and its analogue ophthalmic acid, in ACC tumors ( Fig. 2c , Suppl. Table 3 ). Elevated hexosamine biosynthesis intermediates, including uridine diphosphate N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc) and uridine diphosphate N-acetylgalactosamine (UDP-GalNAc), were consistent with enhanced Gln-fueled hexosamine biosynthesis to support protein glycosylation, in keeping with the transcriptomic analysis. We also identified prominent changes in nucleotide metabolism, particularly related to alterations in the tissue-level abundance of purine salvage/degradation intermediates. Interestingly, there was a depletion in purine metabolites xanthine, xanthosine, uric acid (potentially reflecting increased recycling to meet biosynthetic demands), but an increase in pyrimidine metabolites thymidine, cytidine, and 3-ureidopropionic acid (suggestive of increased turnover/overflow catabolism). Despite transcriptional up-regulation of several enzymes mediating de novo purine/pyrimidine biosynthesis, steady-state tissue metabolomics did not show changes in de novo intermediates, with the notable exception of the strong depletion of xanthosine monophosphate (XMP), an obligate substrate of the Gln-dependent enzyme GMP synthetase (GMPS). This pattern could be consistent with increased metabolic flux coupled with tight channelling to down-stream processes (DNA/RNA synthesis, hexosamine biosynthesis). In addition to these changes, there was a robust increase in the Gln-dependent co-factors nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and reduced NAD (NADH). Collectively, these findings highlight Gln metabolism as a putative metabolic dependency in ACC. Interestingly, several of these metabolites exhibited progressive changes across the tumorigenic trajectory from normal adrenals to BPCre adrenals pre-malignant transformation to established BPCre ACC tumors, suggestive of involvement in early ACC tumorigenesis ( Fig. 2d , Suppl. Fig. 3a ). Download figure Open in new tab Fig. 2: Targeted tissue metabolomics in BPCre tumors. a Schematic of malignant transformation in BPCre mice. b Principal Component Analysis (PCA) comparing the polar metabolome of control adrenals from C57BL/6J mice (7-11 months, n=10), adrenals from young BPCre mice pre-tumor formation (BPCre-Pre, 4 months, n=4), and ACC tumors from older BPCre mice (BPCre-ACC, 8-13 months, n=8). Circles represent female mice; squares represent male mice. For control and BPCre-Pre adrenals, each sample represents tissue from two adrenals taken from either the same mouse or from two mice of the same genotype and sex. c Polar metabolite changes comparing BPCre-ACC vs control adrenal tissue selected by Volcano plot with fold change threshold (x) 1.2 and t-tests threshold (y) 0.05 (FDR-corrected p values). Dashed lines indicate statistical thresholds. d Top 20 metabolites showing progressive changes from control adrenals → BPCre-Pre adrenals → BPCre-ACC. As additional controls, we compared the metabolomes of adrenals from male and female mice, from young and older mice, and from single-mutant mice. No significant sex-specific differences were observed in tumor metabolomes ( Suppl. Fig. 3b ), although several nucleotide metabolites differed between normal male and female adrenal glands ( Suppl. Fig. 3c ). Additionally, there were no significant differences between control adrenals from younger mice (3-5 months) and older mice (7-10 months) ( Suppl. Fig. 3d ), indicating that metabolic differences between BPCre-Pre adrenals and ACC tumors or older control adrenals are not a function of increasing age. Analysis of adrenals from single-mutant (BCre or PCre) mice revealed only modest changes compared to the complex metabolic rewiring seen in BPCre adrenals prior to tumor formation and older mice with BPCre tumors ( Supplementary Fig. 4a–c). ACC is highly sensitive to disruption of Gln metabolism in vitro and in vivo To assess whether Gln metabolism is a druggable metabolic dependency in ACC, we employed the Gln antagonist 6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine (DON) 12-14,19 . To test its efficacy, we treated a panel of ACC cell lines with DON, including a new murine ACC cell line (BCH-ACC3) derived from a BPCre tumor and three human ACC cell lines (NCI-H295R, CU-ACC1, CU-ACC2) 20 harboring common ACC driver alterations (β-Catenin gain-of-function and/or p53 loss-of-function) ( Suppl . Fig. 5a ). All ACC cell lines displayed marked sensitivity to DON, with IC₅₀ values ranging from 0.03 to 4.07 μM ( Fig. 3a ). Notably, low micromolar concentrations (2.5–5 μM) were sufficient to fully impede colony formation in clonogenic assays across all cell lines ( Fig. 3b ). Download figure Open in new tab Fig. 3: Gln antagonism is highly effective against ACC in vitro and in vivo. a Dose-response curves for four ACC cell lines treated with DON in vitro . Data are displayed as mean ± S.E.M of at least three independent experiments (pooled data) with 5 replicates per dose per experiment. In each experiment, cell viability was normalized to the viability of vehicle-treated cells. b Clonogenic assays in four ACC cell lines treated with DON in vitro . N=3 replicates per dose; *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001, ****p<0.0001. One-way ANOVA with post-hoc Tukey’s tests. Data representative of three independent experiments. c Schematic and tumor growth curve from subcutaneous (SQ) BCH-ACC3 implants in male C57BL/6J mice. Mice were treated with JHU-083 1 mg/kg (or vehicle) from day 6-10 post-implantation and 0.33 mg/kg from days 11-15. Tumor inhibition is shown until first sacrifice (day 15). N=9,13; ****p<0.0001 (t-test at the end of the treatment course). Data are representative of three independent experiments. d Survival curves post SQ implantation of BCH-ACC3 cells in male C57BL/6J mice. JHU-083 was administered at 1 mg/kg from day 6-10 post-implantation and 0.33 mg/kg from days 11-26. Results were analysed by log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test. Data are representative of two independent experiments. e Tumor growth curve from NCI-H295R cell implants in male immunodeficient NSG mice. 1 mg/kg (or vehicle) from day 6-10 post-implantation and 0.33 mg/kg from days 11-15. N=7,8; **p<0.01 (t-test at the end of the treatment course). f Tumor volume on day 15 post BCH-ACC3 implant in male C57BL/6J and NSG mice treated in parallel. Values have been normalized to vehicle-treated mice of the same strain. N=8-13; ***p<0.001 (t-test). Data are representative of three independent experiments. g Schematic and tumor growth curve from NCI-H295R cell implants in female immunodeficient NSG mice. JHU-083 was administered six days per week for three weeks (days 6-29 post implant). N=13-14 per group. **p<0.01 (t-test at the end of the treatment course). Data are representative of two independent experiments. To test the effectiveness of Gln antagonism in vivo , we established a syngeneic subcutaneous (SQ) implant model using BCH-ACC3 cells and immunocompetent male C57BL/6J mice. BCH-ACC3 cells were injected SQ into the flanks of C57BL/6J mice, where they rapidly formed tumors ( Fig. 3c , Suppl. Fig. 5b-c ). To assess the impact of Gln antagonism in this model, mice harboring established SQ tumors were treated with JHU-083, a DON pro-drug that is selectively activated within the tumor microenvironment 12 - 14 . Treatment with JHU-083 was well tolerated ( Suppl. Fig. 5d ) and led to >80% inhibition of tumor growth after nine days ( Fig. 3c ), demonstrating potent anti-tumor efficacy, while also markedly prolonging survival ( Fig. 3d ). To assess the contribution of immune-mediated mechanisms on tumor growth (as seen in other cancer models 13 , 14 ), we treated immunodeficient NSG mice harboring SQ BCH-ACC3 tumors with JHU-083, which confirmed the strong anti-tumor effect of Gln antagonism, albeit with somewhat lower efficacy than in immunocompetent mice ( Fig. 3e-f ). These results are consistent with JHU-083 having an effect on ACC tumor growth that is in large part immune cell-independent. Importantly, JHU-083 also significantly inhibited tumor growth in a xenograft model of human ACC (using NCI-H295R implants in NSG mice) ( Fig. 3g ), underscoring its preclinical efficacy. Inhibition of Gln-dependent nucleotide biosynthesis drives DON’s anti-tumor effect in ACC Broad-spectrum Gln antagonism by DON can target multiple Gln-dependent metabolic pathways essential for tumor cell proliferation and survival, including glutaminolysis, non-essential amino-acid biosynthesis, hexosamine biosynthesis, glutathione biosynthesis, and de novo purine and pyrimidine biosynthesis 12,21,22 . To identify the metabolic pathway(s) responsible for DON’s cytotoxicity in ACC, we performed rescue experiments with cultured ACC cells to functionally bypass specific Gln-dependent processes. Supplementation of ACC cell lines with a cell-permeable nucleoside (Nuc) cocktail was able to fully rescue cell viability in all four ACC cell lines ( Fig. 4a , Suppl. Fig. 6a ). In contrast, supplementation with (1) non-essential amino-acids (NEAA), (2) N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) to support protein glycosylation pathways, (3) α-ketoglutarate (αKG) to restore TCA cycle function, or (4) antioxidants such as glutathione (GSH) or vitamin E (Trolox), failed to rescue the effect of DON on cell viability ( Fig. 4a–b ). These findings identify the blockade of Gln-fueled de novo nucleotide biosynthesis as the principal mechanism underpinning DON’s effect on ACC cell viability. Download figure Open in new tab Fig. 4: Gln-fueled de novo nucleotide biosynthesis as a metabolic vulnerability in ACC. a BCH-ACC3 and NCI-H295R cell viability normalized to Vehicle (DON-) after treatment with DON (DON +), alone or supplemented with the indicated metabolites. DON was administered at 50 nM for 72h for BCH-ACC3 and 5 µM for 144h for NCI-H295R cells. Nuc: Embryomax nucleoside cocktail 1x, NEAA: non-essential amino-acid cocktail (0.1 mM), NAG: n-acetyl-glucosamine (10 μM), α-KG: dimethyl-2-oxo-glutarate, cell-permeable form of α-ketoglutarate, 5.5 mM. Data representative of three independent experiments (5-8 technical replicates per experiment). ****p<0.0001, one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s test for multiple comparisons between DON monotherapy and each other group. b BCH-ACC3 (left) or NCI-H295R (right) viability normalized to Vehicle (DON-) after treatment with DON (DON +), alone or with co-treatment with antioxidants (reduced glutathione (GSH) 2 mM or Trolox 10 μΜ). DON was administered at 50 nM for 72h for BCH-ACC3 and 5 μM for 144h for NCI-H295R. Data representative of three independent experiments (4-8 technical replicates per experiment). ****p<0.0001, one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s test for multiple comparisons between DON monotherapy and each other group. c Schematic of JHU-083 treatment of BCH-ACC3 implants for metabolomic analysis. d Principal Component Analysis (PCA) comparing the polar metabolome of BCH-ACC3 implants in C57BL/6 mice after 48h treatment with JHU-083 (1 mg/kg once daily, n=5) or vehicle (n=4). e Polar metabolite changes comparing JHU-083 vs vehicle-treated tumors by Volcano plot with fold change threshold (x) >1.2 and t-tests threshold (y) p<0.05. Dashed lines indicate statistical thresholds. Purine metabolite names are highlighted in red font; pyrimidine metabolite names are highlighted in blue font. f Heat-map of the top 25 differential polar metabolites in JHU-083 tumors vs vehicle. Purine metabolite names are highlighted in red font. Pyrimidine metabolite names are highlighted in blue font. g Schematic summarising the two pathways contributing to purine (left) and pyrimidine (right) nucleotide biosynthesis: de novo biosynthesis (Gln-dependent, red arrows) and salvage/degradation pathways (blue arrows). The five enzymes that use Gln as a substrate are indicated in circles. h Survival curves comparing overall survival in patients with high (top 50%) versus low (bottom 50%) levels of expression of indicated Gln-metabolizing enzymes, based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Significance and hazards ratio were assessed by Log-rank (Mantel-Cox) tests. To assess the metabolic impact of Gln antagonism on ACC in vivo , we treated mice harboring SQ BCH-ACC3 tumors with JHU-083 and applied LC-MS-based targeted metabolomics 48 hours after treatment ( Fig. 4c ). This analysis revealed a marked depletion of purine metabolites (including guanine, GDP, dGMP, AMP, and hypoxanthine) and, to a lesser extent, pyrimidine intermediates such as cytidine and thymidine monophosphate (TMP) ( Fig. 4d–g , Suppl. Fig. 6b ). Consistent with on-target inhibition of Gln-dependent purine biosynthesis, JHU-083 treatment led to a marked accumulation of xanthosine monophosphate (XMP), a substrate of the Gln-utilizing enzyme GMPS in the purine biosynthetic pathway. JHU-083 treatment also led to decreased glutathione levels, consistent with partial inhibition of Gln-dependent antioxidant synthesis, and a modest trend towards decreased hexosamine biosynthesis. However glutamate, α-ketoglutarate, and TCA cycle intermediates were not depleted by JHU-083, suggesting that mitochondrial metabolism is not broadly suppressed by JHU-083 ( Suppl. Fig. 6b ). Collectively, these findings validate de novo purine biosynthesis as the dominant Gln-dependent pathway disrupted by JHU-083 in vivo and confirm this metabolic axis as a critical vulnerability in ACC. High expression of Gln-metabolising enzymes in de novo nucleotide biosynthesis correlates with poor prognosis Building on the findings that ACC is highly sensitive to Gln antagonism, we examined the gene expression of all known Gln-utilizing enzymes in human ACC using the TCGA dataset. Remarkably, high expression of four out of five key Gln-dependent enzymes directly involved in de novo purine and pyrimidine biosynthesis— PFAS , GMPS , CAD , and CTPS1 —were significantly associated with worse survival ( Fig. 4g-h ). Interestingly, among 32 other cancer types in TCGA, only five (mesothelioma, low-grade glioma, hepatocellular carcinoma, sarcoma, and cutaneous melanoma) showed a comparable correlation between high expression of two or more Gln-metabolizing enzymes involved in nucleotide biosynthesis and poor prognosis ( Suppl. Fig. 7a ), highlighting the distinctive dependence of ACC on this metabolic axis, particularly in aggressive tumors with poor prognosis. A significant association with overall survival was also observed for ASNS , encoding asparagine synthetase, and a trend was noted for NADSYN1 (coenzyme synthesis), but no differences were observed for enzymes involved in alternative Gln-related pathways such as GLS and GLS2 (glutaminolysis) or GFPT1 (hexosamine synthesis) ( Suppl. Fig. 7b ). Inhibition of the DNA damage response synergizes with Gln antagonism to enhance anti-tumor effects in ACC Nucleotide depletion is a well-established driver of replication stress, leading to replication fork stalling, accumulation of DNA damage, and ultimately cell death 23 . Given DON disrupts de novo nucleotide biosynthesis, we hypothesized that its anti-tumor activity in ACC might involve induction of replication stress. To test this, we assessed γH2AX levels (a marker of DNA double-strand breaks and replication-associated DNA damage 24 ) in SQ BCH-ACC3 tumors treated with JHU-083 or vehicle, which revealed a striking increase in DNA double-strand breaks compared to controls ( Fig. 5a ). Consistent with this, we confirmed that DNA damage was also induced by JHU-083 in human NCI-H295R xenografts implanted in NSG mice ( Fig. 5b ). Download figure Open in new tab Fig. 5: ATR inhibition exhibits synergistic cytotoxicity with Gln antagonism. a Representative phosphorylated histone H2A.X (γ-H2AX) staining (grey) of SQ BCH-ACC3 implants in C57BL/6J mice treated with JHU-083 or vehicle for nine days (days 6-15 post-implant). Blue, DAPI. Scale bars: 50 μM. b Representative phosphorylated histone H2A.X (γ-H2AX) staining (grey) of SQ NCI-H295R implants in NSG mice treated with JHU-083 or vehicle (days 6-29 post-implant). Blue, DAPI. Scale bars: 50 μM. c,d Assessment of DON and Elimusertib-induced apoptosis (luminescence-based quantification of activated caspase 3/7) in BCH-ACC3 ( c ) and NCI-H295R ( d ) cells, treated for 48 hours (BCH-ACC3) and 96 hours (NCI-H295R). Data are representative of three independent experiments (3-4 technical replicates per experiment). For both cell lines, results were analysed by two-way ANOVA, showing very high statistical significance (p<0.0001) for the effect of DON and Elimusertib on apoptosis, as well as for their interaction (consistent with synergy). Post-hoc pairwise comparisons (Tukey’s) are shown on the graphs. *p<0.05, ****p<0.0001. e Synergistic effects of DON and Elimusertib on ACC cell viability. ACC cell lines were treated with varying doses of DON and Elimusertib for 72 h (BCH-ACC3) or 144 h (NCI-H295R, CU-ACC1 and CU-ACC2), followed by assessment of cell viability. BCH-ACC3, NCI-H295R and CU-ACC2: data are representative of three independent experiments (4-8 technical replicates per experiment). CU-ACC1: Data represent combination (median viabilities) of three independent experiments. Synergy or antagonism was assessed using the SiCoDEA software and applying the Chou-Talalay method Combination Index (CI). Blue color indicates synergy; red color indicates antagonism. Numbers represent log (Combination Index). Cells counteract the effect of replication stress through activation of the DNA Damage Response (DDR), including the ATR and ATM checkpoint kinase pathways, which promote cell survival by halting cell cycle progression, up-regulating nucleotide synthesis, and activating DNA repair programs 24 , 25 . Based on the observation that treatment with the DON pro-drug JHU-083 leads to DNA damage in ACC, we hypothesized that inhibiting ATR signaling could block this protective response and drive synthetic lethality in Gln-deprived cancer cells. To test this, we treated ACC cells with the combination of DON and the ATR inhibitor elimusertib, which led to a dramatic increase in apoptotic cell death in both murine (BCH-ACC3) and human (NCI-H295R) ACC cell lines compared to either agent alone ( Fig. 5c-d ). We further evaluated the effects of combination treatment on cell viability across a matrix of dose combinations in all four ACC cell lines. Remarkably, we observed robust synergy in all p53-deficient cell lines (BCH-ACC3, NCI-H295R, CU-ACC2), and in CU-ACC1 (p53 wild-type) at higher elimusertib concentrations ( Fig. 5e ). Together, these findings demonstrate that DON-induced replication stress renders ACC cells highly dependent on ATR-mediated DDR for survival. Pharmacological co-inhibition of Gln metabolism and ATR signaling produces synergistic anti-tumor effects, particularly in p53-deficient ACC cells, and highlights a potentially promising combination treatment approach. Untargeted serum metabolomics reveals dysregulation of nucleotide and amino-acid metabolism in patients with ACC To validate the findings showing dysregulation of Gln-dependent metabolic pathways in ACC, we performed untargeted serum metabolomics on pre-operative samples from 54 patients with ACC and 291 age- and body mass index-matched patients with benign adrenocortical adenomas (ACA), prospectively collected across 10 centers in Europe and the U.S. ( Fig. 6a-b ). Differential abundance analysis using Benjamini– Hochberg correction revealed 437 metabolites that differed significantly between ACC and ACA (FDR < 0.05), of which 144 were elevated and 293 were reduced in the serum of patients with ACC ( Fig. 6c , Suppl. Table 4 ). Polar metabolite pathway analysis revealed eight significantly dysregulated pathways (FDR<0.05), including pyrimidine metabolism and several amino-acid metabolic pathways directly linked to Gln utilisation (‘Arginine and Proline Metabolism’, ‘Arginine Biosynthesis’, ‘Alanine, Aspartate and Glutamate metabolism’) ( Fig. 6d and Suppl. Table 5 ). Importantly, there was a significant depletion of circulating Gln levels, suggestive of increased uptake of Gln by ACC tumors ( Fig. 6e ). Focusing on nucleotide metabolites, we found an increase in several purine and pyrimidine intermediates in the salvage/degradation pathways, including hypoxanthine, xanthosine, xanthine ( Fig. 6f ), cytidine, uridine, and deoxyuridine ( Fig. 6g ), reflecting enhanced nucleotide turnover consistent with the up-regulated nucleotide biosynthesis programs identified in tumor transcriptional profiles. As expected, there was a marked increase in several steroid conjugates ( Suppl. Fig. 8 and Suppl. Table 4 ), in keeping with previous studies using targeted steroid profiling in patients with adrenal tumors 26 - 28 . Together, these serum metabolomic data complement the tumor-specific analyses and reinforce the presence of key changes in nucleotide and amino-acid metabolism. Download figure Open in new tab Fig. 6: Untargeted global serum metabolomics in patients with ACC vs benign adrenocortical adenomas (ACA). a Schematic overview of clinical study. UHPLC-MS: Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. b Clinical characteristics of study participants. c Volcano plot with significantly altered metabolites in the serum of patients with ACC, n=54 versus ACA, n=291 (red dots: increased in ACC, blue dots: decreased in ACC). d Dysregulated pathways (FDR<0.05) derived from analysis of polar metabolites. e-g Box and whiskers plots comparing relative serum abundance of Gln ( e ) and selected purine ( f ) and pyrimidine ( g ) metabolites from the salvage/degradation pathways in patients with ACC vs. ACA. The box edges represent the 1st and 3rd quartile and the upper and lower whiskers represent Q3 + 1.5x Interquartile range (IQR) and Q1 - 1.5x IQR, respectively. The median is depicted as the horizontal line within the box. *p<0.05, ** p<0.01, ***p<0.001 (t-test). For all metabolites, alternative putative annotations can be found in Suppl. Table 4 using peak identifiers indicated on the graph titles. Discussion By integrating transcriptional profiling, targeted tissue metabolomics in genetically engineered mouse models, and untargeted serum metabolomics from a large patient cohort, our study provides cross-species validation of metabolic rewiring in ACC. With this approach, we identified Gln metabolism as a central, actionable vulnerability, based on transcriptional up-regulation of common pathways in mouse and human ACC, validation of changes in key metabolites and metabolic pathways in mouse ACC tissues, demonstration of ACC tumor sensitivity to Gln inhibition in vitro and in vivo , and validation of key changes in circulating metabolites from patients with ACC. Additionally, we showed that addition of ATR inhibition to Gln antagonism results in potent synergy in multiple ACC cell lines in vitro , introducing a new treatment paradigm. Consistent with this work, a previous pan-cancer analysis of the TCGA database used a gene signature consisting of Gln transporters and glutaminase isozymes and showed an association with poor prognosis that was stronger for ACC than for nearly any other cancer type 29 . We selected DON to target Gln metabolism due to its effects on multiple Gln-metabolising pathways (rather than focused targeting of glutaminolysis), and additionally taking into account the highly promising new therapeutic opportunities provided by the recent discovery of DON pro-drugs such as JHU-083. While clinical development of DON was previously hindered by the significant systemic toxicity, these new pro-drugs, which are preferentially activated in the tumor microenvironment through moiety cleavage, provide a new avenue to clinical translation for this metabolic treatment 12 , 19 . Indeed, a drug from this new class (DRP-104) is in Phase I-II trials for KEAP1-mutant lung cancer ( NCT04471415 ). Moving forward, it will be critical to identify cancer types that are most likely to respond to Gln antagonism 30 , 31 , as well as identify rational combination treatment approaches. These data reveal that ACC cells are highly sensitive to Gln antagonism, in vitro, compared with other cancer cell lines 13,14,22 , and in vivo , using both WT and NSG SQ implant models with murine and human cell lines. DON theoretically has the capacity to inhibit all Gln-metabolizing enzymes, including glutaminase as well as transamidases that participate in amino-acid, nucleotide, co-factor and hexosamine biosynthesis 12 . Individual enzyme inhibition kinetics are incompletely described and the relative importance of different Gln-utilizing pathways in the anti-tumor effects of DON is not well understood. The in vitro rescue experiments suggest that, in ACC, DON primarily affects cell proliferation and viability through inhibition of de novo purine and pyrimidine biosynthesis. Consistent with this, depletion of purine metabolites, in particular, was a prominent change in the metabolome of ACC tumors treated with JHU-083, with a lesser effect on pyrimidine metabolites. This asymmetric nucleotide response is suggestive of preferential functional inhibition of purine de novo glutamine-amidotransferases (PPAT, PFAS, GMPS) and/or with greater salvage buffering on the pyrimidine arm. These findings are consistent with recent studies assessing DON as a treatment in KEAP1-mutant lung cancer 31 and prostate cancer 32 , which also showed that cancer cell-intrinsic sensitivity to Gln antagonism was contingent on inhibition of de novo nucleotide biosynthesis. Conversely, nucleoside substitution had no ability to rescue the effect of DON on pancreatic cancer cell viability, while substitution with the amino-acid asparagine did 22 . Previous work in a colon cancer cell line using shRNA-mediated knockdown of individual Gln-metabolising enzymes suggested that targeting of three Gln-metabolising enzymes involved in pyrimidine biosynthesis ( Cad and Ctps1 ) and hexosamine biosynthesis ( Gfpt1 ) had the strongest effect on cell viability in comparison to other Gln-metabolising enzymes 13 . Therefore, an important message of this study is that, although DON may be effective across a number of cancer types, the mechanisms underpinning cancer cell-intrinsic sensitivity to the drug are cancer type-dependent. Metabolic dysregulation in the nucleotide salvage/degradation pathways was a prominent finding in both the tissue-level analysis in BPCre ACC tumors and in the serum-level metabolomic analysis in the cohort of patients with ACC. Pyrimidine salvage/degradation metabolites were increased at both a tissue level (BPCre tumors) and at a serum level in patients with ACC. Conversely, purine metabolites were relatively depleted in BPCre tumors but increased in the serum of patients. This discrepancy may reflect accelerated release of these metabolites into the bloodstream from viable or necrotic ACC cells, or contributions from other tissues. Alternative, it is also possible that there may be differences in purine degradation metabolite handling between mouse and human ACC. The observed dysregulation of nucleotide salvage/degradation pathways may plausibly be related to the exceeding sensitivity of ACC to pharmacological inhibition of the alternative nucleotide biosynthetic pathway ( de novo biosynthesis), which requires nitrogen contribution by Gln. Dedicated future studies employing metabolic tracing (e.g. by 13 C and 15 N-labeled Gln) will be required to probe the dynamics of nucleotide salvage/degradation in ACC. A key translational question is how to build rational drug combinations that will enhance the efficacy of Gln antagonism. In this work, we demonstrate that Gln antagonism by JHU-083 induces DNA damage in ACC tumors in vivo . Interestingly, the same effect was very recently shown in an independent study using the DON pro-drug DRP-104 in prostate cancer 33 . Building on this finding, we hypothesized that concurrent inhibition of the DNA damage response through the ATR pathway inhibitor elimusertib could yield synergy with DON. Indeed, we confirmed that this new combination can elicit synergistic cytotoxicity across all p53-deficient ACC cell lines tested and, at higher doses, in a p53 WT line. Given that p53 deficiency sensitizes cells to replication stress 34 , this likely underlies the enhanced response observed in p53-mutant cell lines. These findings introduce a new treatment paradigm that may also be of value in other p53-deficient cancers, or cancers in which the anti-tumor effect of DON is primarily driven by nucleotide depletion, such as prostate cancer or KEAP1-mutant lung cancer 31 - 33 . The clinical study reported here is the largest metabolomic study to date in patients with adrenal tumors and provides a unique metabolomic dataset that will be valuable for future studies exploring new targeted therapeutic approaches or biomarker development. It is important to note that the control group for this clinical study was patients with benign adrenocortical adenomas rather than healthy adrenals, in order to allow exploration of diagnostic biomarkers in future work to distinguish benign from malignant adrenal tumors. A limitation of serum metabolomic analyses is that observed differences may, at least in part, reflect changes in systemic metabolism rather than tumor metabolism (due to a lack of specificity). Additionally, mass-to-charge ratios prior to fragmentation (MS1) were used for putative metabolite identification in most cases, rendering distinction between isomeric compounds difficult, with all putative metabolites being reported. Finally, while the two patient cohorts were well-matched for age and BMI, the cohort of patients with ACAs had a stronger female preponderance; however, no statistically significant differences were observed between male and female patients with ACC. A previous study in human ACC using spatial metabolomics by MALDI mass spectrometry imaging revealed that high intra-tumoral metabolic heterogeneity is associated with poor prognosis 35 . We were not able to assess intra-tumoral heterogeneity in this work. Another limitation is that we did not use metabolic tracing to directly quantify changes in the intracellular metabolic fate of Gln in primary ACC tumors, or in SQ tumors treated with JHU-083. These in vivo targeted metabolomic data, however, clearly demonstrate that depletion of the pool of purine metabolites is the prominent metabolic change in JHU-083-treated tumors in vivo . Interestingly, there was no apparent depletion of alpha-ketoglutarate or TCA cycle metabolites. This is in keeping with recent metabolic tracing studies in xenograft models of renal cell carcinoma, which showed unimpeded [U- 13 C] Gln labeling of TCA cycle metabolites 36 . In summary, this study provides a systematic exploration of metabolic rewiring in ACC, leading to the discovery that this rare cancer is sensitive to targeting of Gln’s contribution to de novo nucleotide biosynthesis through treatment with Gln antagonists. With the recent development of DON pro-drugs with a broad therapeutic window, these robust pre-clinical findings are of high translational potential for this aggressive and treatment-resistant cancer. We also show that DNA damage induced by Gln antagonism is an important mechanism, serving as the basis for potent synergistic anti-tumor effects through combination with ATR pathway inhibition. Methods Genomic Methods To characterize the molecular similarities between BPCre tumors and human ACC, we performed bulk RNA-seq on BPCre tumors ( n = 7, 5 from female and 2 from male mice, aged 9-12 months) and control mouse adrenals without mutations ( n = 6, 5 from female ASCre/+ mice and 1 from a C57BL/6J female mouse, aged 5-11 months). We also analyzed publicly available bulk RNA-seq data from human ACC tumors (TCGA-ACC, n=79) 3 and normal human adrenals (GTEx, n=295) 15 . The GTEx and TCGA datasets were normalized and batch-corrected using the Variance Stabilizing Transformation (vst) function in the DESeq2 package 37 . Differential expression analysis was then performed with DESeq2 as well, restricted to a curated list of 2,754 metabolic genes and their mouse orthologs 16 . Genes with a Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05 were considered significantly differentially expressed. For pathway interpretation, lists of significant genes were tested for KEGG over-representation using Enrichr 38 (human and mouse separately), and cross-species conservation was assessed at the pathway level. For prespecified pathways (Purine metabolism, Pyrimidine metabolism, Glutathione metabolism, Amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism), we generated heatmaps using variance-stabilized expression values of the significant genes in each pathway. A curated set of genes involved in de novo and salvage nucleotide biosynthesis or nucleotide metabolism was retrieved from the Reactome database via the Molecular Signatures Database (MSigDB, v2025.1), with cross-referencing to the KEGG database. All analyses and plots were produced in R, utilizing the DESeq2, ComplexHeatmap 39 , and ggplot2 packages 40 . Mice All animal procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees of Boston Children’s Hospital. Mouse strains used in this work were: C57BL/6J (Jackson Laboratory, #000664), ASCre/+ (Cyp11b2tm1.1(cre)Brlt 41 ), Ctnnb1fl(ex3) (Ctnnb1tm1Mmt 42 ), Trp53flox/flox 43 , and NSG (NOD.Cg-Prkdcscid Il2rgtm1Wjl/SzJ) mice (Jackson laboratory, strain #005557). Cross-breeding of transgenic mice led to the generation of the following adrenal-specific transgenic mice: (1) PCre (ASCre/+:: Trp53flox/flox), P53 loss-of-function (LOF) model; (2) BCre (ASCre/+::Ctnnbflox(ex3)/+), β-catenin gain-of-function (GOF) model and (3) BPCre (ASCre/+::Trp53flox/flox::Ctnnbflox(ex3)/+), p53-LOF/βcat-GOF bigenic model. Mouse sex is indicated in each figure legend or Methods. Littermate animals were studied whenever possible. Drugs 6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine (DON) was purchased from Sigma (D2141). JHU-083 (HY-122218) and elimusertib (HY-101566) were purchased from Medchem Express. Cell Culture The human ACC cell line NCI-H295R was purchased from the ATCC. Human ACC cell lines CU-ACC1 and CU-ACC2 were provided by Dr. Kisseljak-Vassiliades (University of Colorado) 21 . The murine cell line BCH-ACC3 was derived from a 538 mg primary ACC tumor with documented lung metastases in a male BPCre 9 transgenic mouse. Before using BCH-ACC3 cells in tumor formation experiments, they were first assessed for GFP (as the BPCre mouse model includes the ROSA mT/mG reporter allele) and Cre expression (both known to be immunogenic 44 , 45 ) and found that both genes had been lost during serial SQ passaging in C57BL/6J mice during cell line derivation. NCI-H295R and BCH-ACC3 cells were cultured in Advanced DMEM/F12 (Thermo Fisher, 12634010) supplemented with 2% Nu serum (Corning, 355100), 1% ITS (Corning, 354350), 1x Glutamax (Thermo Fisher, 35050061) and 1% Penicillin-Streptomycin (ThermoFisher, 15140122). CU-ACC1 and CU-ACC2 cells were cultured in 3:1 v/v mix of F12 Nutrient Mixture (Ham) (Thermo Fisher, 11765-054) and DMEM-high glucose, pyruvate (Thermo Fisher, 11995-065), 10% fetal bovine serum (Thermo Fisher, A5256701), 0.4 μg/mL hydrocortisone (Sigma, H-0888), 5 μg/mL insulin (Sigma, 16634), 8.4 ng/mL cholera toxin (Sigma, C9903), 10 ng/mL epidermal growth factor (Invitrogen, PHG0311), 24 μg/mL adenine (Sigma, A2786), and 1% Penicillin-Streptomycin (ThermoFisher, 15140122), as previously described 20 . Cells were tested routinely for Mycoplasma infection by PCR. In vitro assessment of cell viability and apoptosis To assess the in vitro efficacy of DON against murine and human ACC cell lines, cells were plated in 96-well plates (Falcon) at different seeding densities depending on the growth kinetics of each cell line: 3,500 cells per well (BCH-ACC3), 6,000 cells per well (CU-ACC1 and CU-ACC2) and 8,000 cells/well (NCI-H295R). The next day, cell culture medium was removed and replaced by 200 µl treatment medium (DON, elimusertib, or combination) at varying concentrations as specified in individual figure legends. Treatment was applied for a total of 72 hours (BCH-ACC3) or 144 hours (NCI-H295R, CU-ACC1 and CU-ACC2) to allow two doubling times. For rescue experiments, cells were co-treated with individual metabolites as specified in figure legends, including 1x non-essential amino-acid cocktail (Thermo Fisher, 11140050), 1x nucleoside cocktail Embryomax (Millipore, ES-008-D), dimethyl-2-oxoglutarate 5.5 mM (Sigma, 349631), GlcNAc 10 μM (Sigma, A8625), 2 mM reduced glutathione (Sigma, G1404), or Trolox 10 μM (Abcam, ab120747). At the end of the treatment course, relative viable cell numbers were measured using the CyQuant Direct Cell Proliferation Assay (Thermo Fisher, C35011) as per the manufacturer’s instructions. Baseline cancer cell line doubling times (in regular growth medium) were calculated by culturing each cell line for 72 hours and using the formula Doubling Time (hours) = (72 * ln(2)) / ln(final cell number / initial cell number). Synergy or antagonism was assessed using the SiCoDEA software and applying the Chou-Talalay Combination Index 46 , 47 . Cellular apoptosis was assessed using the Caspase-Glo 3/7 Assay kit (Promega, G8090), a luminescence-based assay measuring Caspase 3 and 7 activity in cell lysates following the manufacturer’s instructions, as described 48 . To account for differences in cell numbers present at the time of apoptosis measurements, caspase assay results were normalized to relative viable cell numbers, as assessed by the CyQuant Direct Cell Proliferation Assay run in wells treated in parallel. In vitro clonogenic assays For 2D clonogenic assays, cells were plated onto 6-well plates at a seeding density of 1,000 cells per well (BCH-ACC3, NCI-H295R, CU-ACC2) and 5,000 cells per well (CU-ACC1, as seeding 1,000 cells per well did not lead to colony development in this latter cell line). The next day, DON was added directly to wells at the desired concentrations, as specified in figure legends (medium was not changed to avoid washing out cells). Medium containing the drug was replenished every 3-4 days. The treatment course was ended once confluent colony formation was observed in vehicle-treated wells or at pre-specified endpoints (whichever was earlier). Pre-specified endpoints were 10 days for BCH-ACC3 cells and 28 days for NCI-H295R, CU-ACC1 and CU-ACC2. At the end of the course, plates were washed with Phosphate-Buffered Saline (PBS) and fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde in PBS for 30 min. After washing with PBS again, wells were stained with crystal violet (0.1% crystal violet in 5% ethanol in water) for 30 min, then washed with water and left to dry inverted overnight. The next day, cells were imaged at 2x magnification using an Invitrogen EVOS FL 2 Auto microscope. Colonies comprising at least 50 cells were counted in Fiji using the ‘Analyse Particles’ tool. JHU-083 treatment in vivo For experiments involving BCH-ACC3 cells, 3x10 6 cells in 100 μl PBS/Matrigel (Corning) (1:1) were injected subcutaneously in the right flank of 2-month-old male C57BL/6J or NSG mice (Jackson). Tumors were measured by electronic caliper on day 6 and volume was calculated using the formula volume=length x (width) 2 /2. Mice were randomized to treatment groups and treatment was commenced on the same day. JHU-083 was diluted in 100% ethanol and stored at -20°C. Working solution of JHU-083 in PBS with 2.5% ethanol was prepared every day and administered by oral gavage at a dose of 1 mg/kg/day (days 6-10) and 0.33 mg/kg thereafter, as previously described 13 . Tumor growth and mouse weight was monitored by electronic caliper every 72 hours. For tumor analysis by histology, mice were sacrificed and tumors were collected on day 15. JHU-083 or vehicle was administered 60-90 min before tumor collection. For experiments involving NCI-H295R cells, 10x10 6 cells in 200 μl PBS/Matrigel (1:1) were injected subcutaneously in the right flank of 2-month-old female NSG mice (Jackson). Tumors were measured by electronic caliper on day 6 and volume was calculated using the formula volume=length x (width) 2 /2. Mice were randomized to treatment groups and treatment was commenced on the same day. JHU-083 was diluted in 100% ethanol and stored at -20°C. Working solution of JHU-083 in PBS with 2.5% ethanol was prepared every day and administered by oral gavage at a dose of 1 mg/kg/day 6 days per week (days 6-29). Treatment dose was reduced to 0.5 mg/kg/day in animals with weight loss>7.5% from baseline and suspended in animals with weight loss >12.5% from baseline until weight improved (no mice lost >20% of their body weight or reached endpoints for euthanasia under this protocol). Tumor growth and mouse weight was monitored by electronic caliper every 72 hours. For both implant models, mice were sacrificed when tumor volume exceeded 2,000 mm 3 , tumors became ulcerated or necrotic, or when mice lost >20% weight from baseline. Targeted tissue metabolomic analysis For metabolomic analysis comparing primary ACC tumors in BPCre mice with adrenals from other transgenic mice and from wild-type mice, mice were euthanized and tumors were immediately dissected and a snap-frozen on dry ice. Because of the small weight of mouse adrenals, two pooled adrenals were used per sample, either deriving from the same mouse or from two separate mice of the same sex, age and genotype. For ACC tumors up to 10 mg of tissue was used per sample. For metabolomic analysis comparing SQ BCH-ACC3 implants treated with JHU-083 or vehicle, mice were euthanized after 48 h of treatment and tumors were immediately dissected and snap-frozen on dry ice. Up to 10 mg of tissue was used per sample. Samples were extracted with methanol: water: chloroform (1:1:1). The water-methanol phase containing polar metabolites was dried down and reconstituted with water/acetonitrile (1:1) with the volume normalized to tissue wet weight. The polar extract was separated on an iHILIC column (5 μm, 150 mm x 2.1 mm I.D., Nest Group) 49 . The column was coupled to an Agilent 6546 LC/Q-TOF with an ESI source operated in negative and/or positive mode. The identity of each metabolite was confirmed by matching retention time and MS/MS fragmentation data to standard compounds and/or a database. Metabolite quantification was performed using MassHunter Profinder 10.0 software (Agilent). Data were analysed using Metaboanalyst 6.0. Features with >40% missing data for all groups were removed, and other missing variables were replaced by zero. Peak intensities were normalized to internal standards (D8-phenylalanine for polar metabolites) and to total ion count, log-transformed, and mean-centered before statistical analysis. Paraffin Section Immunofluorescence After fixation in 4% paraformaldehyde, harvested ACC implants were embedded in paraffin blocks. Paraffin sections were cut at 5 µm thickness. Sections were rinsed in xylene, an ethanol gradient and then phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). Antigen retrieval was performed in 10 mM Sodium Citrate pH 6.0. Sections were blocked in 5% Normal Goat Serum (Sigma, G9023) in PBS for 1 hour at room temperature. Primary Phospho-Histone H2A.X (Ser139) Antibody (Cell Signaling, #2577) was diluted 1:200 in 5% normal goat serum in PBS and incubated on sections at 4°C overnight. Slides were washed three times for 5 min in 0.1% Tween-20 in PBS. Secondary antibody (Alexa Fluor 594-conjugated goat anti-rabbit IgG antibody) was diluted 1:200 in PBS and incubated on sections at room temperature for 1-2 hours. For nuclear staining, DAPI (4’,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole) was added to the secondary antibody mixture at a final concentration of 1:1000. After three 5-min washes with 0.1% Tween-20 in PBS, slides were mounted with ProLong Gold Antifade Mountant (Thermo Fisher, P36930). Images were acquired using a Nikon upright Eclipse 90i microscope and adjusted for brightness and contrast in ImageJ. TCGA transcriptome analysis GEPIA (online analysis tool) was used to access and process publicly available transcriptomic data from ACC and 32 other human cancers, collected in the context of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) 50 . Survival comparisons were performed by logrank (Mantel-cox) tests. Clinical study design All patients were prospectively recruited through the cross-sectional Evaluation of Urine Steroid Metabolomics in the Differential Diagnosis of Adrenocortical Tumors (EURINE-ACT) study, whose primary aim was to validate urine steroid profiling as a new diagnostic test for ACC 26 . The EURINE-ACT study was registered and approved by the European Network for the Study of Adrenal Tumors (ENSAT), in addition to local institute review board approvals. All patient recruitment centers had ethical approval for pseudonymized phenotype recording in the online ENSAT database and all participants of the EURINE-ACT study provided written informed consent prior to study participation. Inclusion criteria included adult participants (age ≥18 years) with a newly identified adrenal mass of more than 1 cm diameter. Exclusion criteria were biochemical evidence of pheochromocytoma, pregnancy, lactation, and current or recent (<6 months) intake of drugs known to alter steroid synthesis or metabolism. Patients with an adrenal mass discovered during imaging for cancer staging or monitoring were also not eligible. Additional details on patient recruitment for EURINE-ACT are available here 26 . Centers that contributed serum samples for this study came from the following countries: Croatia (Zagreb), France (Bordeaux), Greece (Athens), Germany (Berlin, Munich, Wurzburg, Dresden), Ireland (Galway), Norway (Bergen), Poland (Warsaw), United Kingdom (Birmingham), and the United States (Mayo Clinic). 54 patients with ACC were able to provide serum samples for metabolomic analysis. As a control group, we selected 291 patients with benign adrenocortical adenomas (ACAs) from the same study (EURINE-ACT), who were age- and BMI-matched for the cohort of ACCs. This included patients with non-functioning adrenocortical adenomas, as defined by clinical biochemistry, and patients with glucocorticoid excess, as defined by clinical biochemistry (1 mg dexamethasone suppression test showing cortisol suppression to <1.8 mg/dl). Untargeted serum metabolome analysis For each serum sample, stored at -80°C, 50μL aliquots were used for untargeted metabolome analysis. Two assays were applied to increase the coverage of metabolic features detected; polar (water-soluble) metabolites were analysed by hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) UHPLC-MS, and non-polar (lipid) metabolites by a C 18 reversed-phase lipidomics UHPLC-MS. All samples were analyzed separately in positive and negative ion modes. Raw data files were deconvoluted using the XCMS software. Scatterplot smoothing signal correction was used for signal correction. The mean and relative standard deviation of metabolic feature concentrations were calculated against pooled quality control samples. Following data normalization by probabilistic quotient normalisation, metabolic features were annotated using the in-house BEAMS software and the mass spectral library mzCloud. All non-lipid metabolites were grouped into classes based on KEGG metabolic pathway involvement by applying pathway enrichment analysis in MetaboAnalyst. For lipid-based results, lipids were classified according to LipidMaps ontologies manually. Data were visualised using R v4.2.2 ( r-project.org ) as implemented in R studio v. 2024.04.0 for MacOS. A more detailed description of the method can be found in the Supplemental Material . Quantification and Statistical Analysis All statistical analyses were performed and graphs prepared using Prism 10 (GraphPad), Metaboanalyst version 6.0 51 or R v4.2.2 ( r-project.org ) as implemented in R studio v. 2024.04.0 for MacOS (for metabolomic data). The statistical test used to assess significance for each experiment is indicated in figure legends. To correct for multiple comparisons in the untargeted metabolomic analysis of human serum samples and targeted metabolomic analysis of murine tissue samples, FDR-corrected p values using the Benjamini-Hochberg method were used. To detect metabolites that showed step-wise progression from control adrenals to BPCre-Pre adrenals to ACC tumors, we used Pearson’s correlation coefficients through the Pattern Finder function on Metaboanalyst. For survival analyses, significance and hazards ratio were assessed by Log-rank (Mantel-Cox) tests. In bar graphs, data are presented as Mean ± Standard Error of the Mean (SEM), unless otherwise stated. p<0.05 was considered statistically significant, unless otherwise stated. Data collection and analysis were not performed blind to the experimental conditions. Biorender was used for preparation of schematics. Sex as a biological variable RNA-seq analysis and targeted transcriptomics on BPCre tumors was performed on mice from both sexes. The murine ACC cell line was derived from a tumor that developed in a male mouse. Human cell lines were derived from female patients. Male C57BL/6J and NSG mice were used as hosts in the BCH-ACC3 implant model. Female NSG mice were used as hosts for the NCI-H295R xenograft model. Both male and female patients were included in the clinical study. The ACC cohort had a female preponderance (65%), in line with disease demographics. We were not able to fully match the ACA cohort for sex (91% female preponderance). Author Contributions V.C., K.S.B., W.A., W.B.D., M.C.H. and D.T.B. conceptualized the study and developed the methodology; V.C., K.S.B., J.Y., C.R., M.B., P.V., J.L.K., L.N., A.J. and C.W. performed the experiments; V.C., K.S.B., L.F.N., M.E.K., L.K., S.R. and T.G.P. performed formal data analysis; V.C. and M.E.K. visualised data for figures; V.C., A.P., M.P., M.M., I.D.P., D.D., M.Q., M.C.D., G.A.U., F.B., A.T., M.F., D.K., U.A., D.A.V., K.K.V. and I.B. provided resources (serum samples, cell lines); V.C., A.P., A.E.T. and I.B. provided project administration for the clinical study; all authors interpreted the data; V.C., K.S.B. and D.T.B. wrote the original paper with editorial inputs from all authors; W.B.D., W.A., M.C.H. and D.T.B. provided the supervision; W.A., M.C.H. and D.T.B. acquired the funds. Competing Interest Statement The authors declare no competing interests. Supplemental Methods Untargeted serum metabolome analysis The samples were aliquoted on the day of collection and stored locally at -80°C. The samples were transported on dry ice to the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and stored at -80°C prior to untargeted serum metabolome profiling. Sample Extraction Serum samples: Samples were randomised using the RAND() function in Microsoft Excel to determine the sample preparation order. This order was assessed to ensure that all the metadata (age, sex, body mass index, and disease classification) was randomised and there were no patterns/correlations with the sample preparation order. Serum samples were thawed on ice on the day of preparation. For the HILIC assay, plasma (50 μL) and 1/1 acetonitrile/methanol (v/v) (150 μL) were mixed by vortex (120 s) and centrifuged (17,000 g, 20 min, 4°C). For lipid assays, plasma (50 μL) and isopropanol (150 μL) were mixed by vortex (120 s) and centrifuged (17,000 g, 20 min, 4°C). Pooled QC samples: 120 µL serum aliquots from all biological samples were transferred to a single tube and vortex mixed. This single tube sample was called the pooled quality control (QC) sample. Multiple 50 μL aliquots were prepared as described for serum samples. Process blank samples: Blank extraction solutions were prepared by performing the extraction protocol as described above for serum samples with no serum present. Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry: All of the three types of samples (biological, QC and blank) were analyzed by applying two UHPLC–MS methods in positive and negative ion modes separately using a Dionex UltiMate 3000 UHPLC system coupled with a heated electrospray Q Exactive Focus mass spectrometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Analysis order for the samples was randomized, and all of the samples were analyzed in two analytical batches. Ten QC samples were injected at the start of each assay/ion mode to condition the analytical system and were then injected after every 6th biological sample, with two QC samples being analyzed at the end of each batch. The blank sample was analyzed as the 5th and as the final injection of each batch. HILIC assays: These assays used an Accucore150-Amide-HILIC column (100 x 2.1mm, 2.6 μm, ThermoFisher Scientific). For positive ion analysis, mobile phase A was 10 mM ammonium formate dissolved in acetonitrile/water/formic acid (95:4.9:0.1 (v/v)) and mobile phase B was 10 mM ammonium formate dissolved in acetonitrile/water/formic acid (50/49.9/0.1 (v/v)). For negative ion analysis, mobile phase A was 10 mM ammonium acetate dissolved in acetonitrile/water/acetic acid (95:4.9:0.1 (v/v)) and mobile phase B was 10 mM ammonium acetate dissolved in acetonitrile/water/acetic acid (50/49.9/0.1 (v/v)). The gradient elution applied for positive and negative ion mode was t=0.0, 1% B; t=1.0, 1% B; t=3.0, 15% B; t=6.0, 50% B; t=9.0, 95% B; t=10.0, 95% B; t=10.5, 1% B; t=14.0, 1% B. All changes were linear (curve = 5) and the flow rate was 0.50 mL.min -1 . Column temperature was 35°C and injection volume was 2 μL. Data were acquired in positive and negative ionization modes separately (70 – 1050 m/z) with a mass resolution 70,000 (FWHM, m/z 200). Ion source parameters applied were Sheath gas = 55 arbitrary units, Aux gas = 35 arbitrary units, Sweep gas = 4 arbitrary units, Spray Voltage = 3.2kV (positive ion) and 2.7kV (negative ion), Capillary temp. = 380°C, Aux gas heater temp. = 440°C. Thermo Exactive Tune (2.8 SP1, build 2806) software controlled the instruments and data acquisition. All data were collected as MS1 data in the Profile mode setting with the exception of five QC sample injections (injections 6-10) where MS/MS data were collected in the “Discovery mode” setting over different precursor m/z ranges (70−210 m/z; 200−310 m/z; 300−410 m/z; 400-510 m/z; 500-1050 m/z) using stepped normalized collision energies (positive ion mode: 20, 40, 100%; negative ion mode: 40, 60, 130%). All samples were maintained at a temperature of 4°C in the autosampler. Instrument maintenance (source and column cleaning) was performed between the end of batch 1 and start of batch 2. Lipid assays: These assays used a reversed-phase Hypersil GOLD C 18 column (100 x 2.1 mm, 1.9μm; Thermo Fisher Scientific). Mobile phase A was 10 mM ammonium formate dissolved in acetonitrile/water/formic acid (60:39.9:0.1 (v/v)) and mobile phase B was 10 mM ammonium formate dissolved in isopropanol/acetonitrile/water/formic acid (85.5/9.5/4.9/0.1 (v/v)). The gradient elution applied was t=0.0, 20% B; t=0.5, 20% B, t=8.5, 100% B; t=9.5, 100% B; t=11.5, 20% B; t=14.0, 20% B. All changes were linear (curve = 5) and the flow rate was 0.40 mL/min. Column temperature was 55 °C and injection volume was 2 μL. Data were acquired in positive and negative ionization mode separately (150 – 2000 m/z ) with a mass resolution 70,000 (FWHM, m/z 200). Ion source parameters applied were Sheath gas = 48 arbitrary units, Aux gas = 15 arbitrary units, Sweep gas = 0 arbitrary units, Spray Voltage = 3.2kV (positive ion) / 2.7kV (negative ion), Capillary temp. = 380°C, Aux gas heater temp. = 450°C. Thermo Exactive Tune (2.8 SP1, build 2806) software controlled the instruments and data acquisition. All data were acquired in Profile mode. All data were collected as MS1 data in profile mode with the exception of five QC sample injections (injections 6-10) where MS/MS data were collected in Discovery mode over different precursor m/z ranges (150−510 m/z; 500−710 m/z; 700−860 m/z; 850−1010 m/z; 1000−2000 m/z) using stepped normalized collision energies (positive ion mode: 20, 40, negative ion mode: 40, 60, 130%). All samples were maintained at a temperature of 4°C in the autosampler. Instrument maintenance (source and column cleaning) was performed between the end of batch 1 and start of batch 2. Raw data processing: Vendor format raw data files (.RAW) were converted to the mzML file format using the open-source ProteoWizard software 1 . Deconvolution was performed by the R package XCMS (version 3.6.1 running in the Galaxy environment) 2 . The R package IPO 3 was used to optimise and obtain XCMS peak picking parameters for each of the different assays: HILIC negative ion mode assay: min peak width = 6.23; max peak width = 40; ppm = 9.98; mzdiff = -0.02025; bw = 0.25; mzwid = 0.001; minfrac = 0.5; snr_thr = 10. HILIC positive ion mode assay: min peak width = 5.70; max peak width = 40; ppm = 7.0; mzdiff = 0.00021; bw = 0.25; mzwid = 0.0059; minfrac = 0.5; snr_thr = 10. Lipids negative and positive ion mode assays: min peak width = 5.44; max peak width = 40; ppm = 6.5; mzdiff = -0.0065; bw = 0.25; mzwid = 0.04265; minfrac = 0.5; snr_thr = 10. A data matrix of metabolite features (i.e., m/z-retention time pairs) versus samples was constructed for each of four assay types (HILIC-negative, HILIC-positive, Lipids-negative, Lipids-positive). Data quality assessment and filtering: Each of the four data matrices constructed by raw data processing was filtered based on the data collected for QC and blank samples 4 . Metabolite features were retained in the data matrix if they were: present in >90% of all the QC samples, had a peak area relative standard deviation (RSD) <30% across all the QC samples (QC11 onwards) and had an extract blank/mean QC area ratio of 0.50; m/z values of all experimentally observed peaks were searched against LIPIDMAPS 5 and HMDB 6 , all matches < 5ppm mass error tolerance were reported). To generate more robust compound annotations using MS/MS data, QC sample UHPLC-MS/MS data were matched to MS/MS databases using the LipidSearch software (lipid assay metabolite annotation; version 4.2.18, Thermo Fisher Scientific) and were searched against the entire in-silico HCD MS/MS database with 5ppm mass error. HILIC MS/MS data were searched in mzCloud using Compound Discoverer (v3.1, Thermo Fisher Scientific) using a >70% match as the criteria for a successful annotation. RT data were matched to an in-house RT library constructed with authentic chemical standards, matches within ± 5 seconds were applied as the criteria for a successful match. LipidSearch and mzCloud annotations were aligned to the XCMS outputs using the R programming language ( https://www.R-project.org ), applying a 5ppm mass error for the MS1 data and a +/- 5 second retention time tolerance window. All annotations described are reported to either level 2 or 3 as defined by the Metabolomics Standards Initiative 7 . Pathway enrichment analysis: Pathway enrichment analysis was performed in the software MetaboAnalyst 8 for HILIC based results. Pathway enrichment analysis applied pathway analysis, scatter plot for visualization method, hypergeometric test for enrichment method, relative-betweenness centrality for topology analysis and Homo sapiens (KEGG) as the pathway library (accessed on 13/05/2024). Only pathways with a p-value (after FDR correction) < 0.05 and with a minimum of five metabolites in the pathway listed as biologically important were reported. For lipids based results, lipids were classified according to LipidMaps ontologies 5 manually. Download figure Open in new tab Suppl. Fig. 1 (Related to Fig. 1): Cross-species comparison of transcriptional metabolic dysregulation in ACC (purine and pyrimidine metabolism). a Venn diagrams showing overlap in significantly up-regulated and down-regulated metabolic genes between human and mouse (BPCre) ACC tumors, as assessed by RNA-seq. Mouse tissue: 6 control adrenals (no mutations) and 7 BPCre ACC tumors. Human tissue: 79 ACC tumors (TCGA) and 295 healthy adrenals (GTEx). b-c Heat-maps illustrating significant expression changes in genes involved in de novo and salvage purine (b) and pyrimidine (c) biosynthesis and catabolism, as assessed by RNA-seq. Genes involved in de novo nucleotide biosynthesis are highlighted in bold purple font. Genes involved in salvage biosynthesis are highlighted in bold green font. Download figure Open in new tab Suppl. Fig. 2 (Related to Fig. 1): Cross-species comparison of transcriptional metabolic dysregulation in ACC (amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism, glutathione metabolism). Heat-maps illustrating significant expression changes in genes involved in amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism ( a ) and glutathione metabolism ( b ) in mouse and human ACC, as assessed by RNA-seq. Mouse tissue: 6 control adrenals (no mutations) and 7 BPCre ACC tumors. Human tissue: 79 ACC tumors (TCGA) and 295 healthy adrenals (GTEx). Download figure Open in new tab Suppl. Fig. 3 (related to Fig. 2): Tissue metabolome analysis from Control and BPCre mice, including comparisons by sex and age. a-d PCA and volcano plots highlighting changes in the polar tissue metabolome of selected groups. For mice without tumors (a, c and d), each sample represents tissue from two adrenals taken from either the same mouse or from two mice of the same genotype. For the volcano plots, metabolites with fold change threshold (x) 1.2 and t-test threshold (y) 0.05 (FDR-corrected p values) are annotated (colored red for increase and purple for decrease). Dashed lines indicate statistical thresholds. a Macroscopically normal adrenals from BPCre mice prior to tumor formation (BPCre-Pre) (n=4 samples from male and female mice, 4 months) vs. control adrenals from C57BL/6J mice (n=6 males and n=4 females, 7-11 months). Samples also shown in Fig. 2b . b ACC tumors from female and male BPCre mice (n=4 tumors from each sex, 8-13 months) c Control adrenals from female and male C57BL/6J mice (n=4 female and n=6 male samples, 7-11 months). d Adrenals from control younger (n=5 samples, age 3–5 months) and older (n=6 samples, age 6-10 months) male C57BL/6J mice. Download figure Open in new tab Suppl. Fig. 4 (related to Fig. 2): Metabolic dysregulation in mice bearing β-Catenin gain-of-function (GOF) mutations or P53 loss-of-function (LOF) mutations. a Schematic of phenotypes in Cyp11b2 (AS) -Cre mouse models. b,c: PCA and volcano plots highlighting changes in the polar metabolome of BCre mice (bearing β-GOF mutations) and PCre mice (bearing p53 LOF mutations), as compared to AS-Cre mice (no mutations). Each sample represents tissue from two adrenals taken from either the same mouse or from two mice of the same genotype. For the volcano plots, metabolites with fold change threshold (x) 1.2 and t-test threshold (y) 0.1 (FDR-corrected p values) are annotated (colored red for increase and purple for decrease). Dashed lines indicate statistical thresholds. b BCre mouse adrenals (n=6 samples from male mice, 7-11 months) vs. control adrenals from C57BL/6J mice (n=6 samples from male mice, 7-10 months). c Adrenals from PCre mice (n=6 samples from male mice, 7-12 months) vs. control adrenals from C57BL/6J mice (n=6 samples from male mice, 7-10 months). Download figure Open in new tab Suppl. Fig. 5 (related to Fig. 3). ACC cell line description and subcutaneous implant model in C57BL/6 mice. a Table summarising ACC cell line characteristics. Doubling time (mean, S.E.M.) for each cell line was calculated from 4-10 independent cell proliferation experiments, using the formula Doubling Time (hours) = (72 * ln(2)) / ln(final cell number / initial cell number). b PCR analysis showing amplification of AS-Cre and ROSA mT/mG alleles in control samples, and loss of ROSA mT/mG and Cre alleles along with deletion of β-catenin exon 3 in BCH-ACC3 cells. c Hematoxylin-Eosin staining from BCH-ACC3 subcutaneous implants. d Body weight (as % of weight at the beginning of treatment) in C57BL/6 mice treated with JHU-083 or vehicle. JHU-083 was administered at 1 mg/kg from day 6-10 post-implantation and 0.33 mg/kg from days 11-14. N=11,7; *p<0.05 (t-test). Download figure Open in new tab Suppl. Fig. 6 (related to Fig. 4): Glutamine antagonism drives nucleotide depletion in ACC. a Viable CU-ACC1 and CU-ACC2 cell number normalized to vehicle (DON-) after treatment with DON (DON +), alone or supplemented with the indicated metabolites. DON was administered at 5 µM for 144h. Nuc: Embryomax nucleoside cocktail 1x. Data representative of three independent experiments (5-8 technical replicates per experiment). ****p<0.0001, one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s test for multiple comparisons between DON monotherapy and each other group. b Relative abundance of selected metabolites in BCH-ACC3 SQ mouse implants after 48h treatment with JHU-083 or vehicle. N=5,4; ns: not significant, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001, t-test. Download figure Open in new tab Suppl. Fig. 7 (related to Fig. 4): Associations between Gln-metabolising enzyme expression and survival (TCGA database). a Cancer types with significant (logrank p<0.05) association between high enzyme gene expression levels and poor prognosis, based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). HR: Hazard ratios. BLCA: Bladder urothelial carcinoma, KICH: kidney chromophobe cell carcinoma, KIRC: kidney renal clear cell carcinoma, KIRP: kidney renal papillary cell carcinoma, LAML: acute myeloid leukemia, LGG: low-grade glioma, LIHC: hepatocellular carcinoma, LUAD: lung adenocarcinoma, MESO: mesothelioma, PAAD: pancreatic adenocarcinoma, PCPG: pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma, SARC: sarcoma, SKCM: skin cutaneous melanoma, THCA: thyroid carcinoma, UVM: uveal melanoma. b Survival curves comparing overall survival in ACC patients with high (top 50%) versus low (bottom 50%) gene expression levels of the indicated Gln-metabolizing enzymes, based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Significance and hazards ratio were assessed by Log-rank (Mantel-Cox) tests. Download figure Open in new tab Suppl. Fig. 8 (related to Fig. 6): Top 10 most up-regulated metabolites in the serum of patients with ACC. Box and whiskers plots comparing relative serum abundance of the 10 most increased metabolites in patients with ACC vs ACA controls (n=54, 291). The box edges represent the 1st and 3rd quartile and the upper and lower whiskers represent Q3 + 1.5x Interquartile range (IQR) and Q1 - 1.5x IQR, respectively. The median is depicted as the horizontal line within the box. ***p<0.001, ****p<0.0001 (t-test). Supplemental Tables View this table: View inline View popup Suppl. Table 1. Significantly up-regulated pathways (Benjamini-Hochberg-corrected FDR<0.05) in murine (BPCre) ACC (A) and human ACC (B). Significantly up-regulated genes are provided for each pathway. View this table: View inline View popup Suppl. Table 2. Significantly down-regulated pathways (Benjamini-Hochberg-corrected FDR<0.05) in murine (BPCre) ACC (A) and human ACC (B). Significantly down-regulated genes are provided for each pathway. View this table: View inline View popup Suppl. Table 3. Significantly dysregulated (Benjamini-Hochberg-corrected FDR1.2 fold-change) polar metabolites in BPCre-ACC tissue, as compared to Control (normal) adrenals. View this table: View inline View popup Suppl. Table 4: Significantly dysregulated (Benjamini-Hochberg-corrected FDR<0.05) serum metabolic features in patients with ACC, as compared to ACA. CE: cholesterol ester; Cer: Ceramide; CL: cardiolipin; DG: diacylglyceride; FA: fatty acid; HexCer: hexose-ceramide; LPA: lysophosphatidic acid; LPC: lysoglycerophosphocholine; LPE: lysoglycerophosphoethanolamine; LPG: lysoglycerophosphoglycerol; LPI: lysoglycerophosphoinositol; LPS: lysoglycerophosphoserine; PC:glycerophosphocholine; PE:glycerophosphoethanolamine; PG: glycerophosphoglycerol; PI: glycerophosphoinositol; PS: glycerophosphoserine; SHexCer: Sulfoglycosphingolipids; SM: sphingomyelin; ST: sterol lipid; TG: triacylglyceride View this table: View inline View popup Suppl. Table 5. Significantly dysregulated (FDR<0.05) metabolic pathways based on analysis of significantly dysregulated polar serum metabolites in patients with ACC vs ACA (with reference to the KEGG database). Significant metabolites in each pathway are highlighted in red font. Acknowledgement We thank members of the Breault and Haigis Labs and Dr. Esin Isik for helpful discussions. This work was supported by R01 DK123694 to D.T.B., a Michail Papamichail, MD, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School to V.C., an Academy of Medical Sciences U.K. Clinical Lecturer Starter Grant SGL020\1018 to V.C., the Wellcome Trust (Investigator Award 209492/Z/17/Z to W.A. and Clinical Research Training Fellowship WT101671 to V.C.), the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013, grant agreement 259735, ENSAT-CANCER, to W.A., M.F., and F.B.), the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) through the construction of the Phenome Center Birmingham (MR/M009157/1) and core programme grant MC_UP_1605/15 to W.A., and a São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) scholarship 2024/14165-6 to J.L.K. Biorender was used to generate schematics for this work ( https://BioRender.com/y9blqb5 , https://BioRender.com/w6r6cqp , https://biorender.com/dl0p0rq , https://biorender.com/k7qp0fh , https://biorender.com/t50p462 ). Funder Information Declared National Institutes of Health, https://ror.org/01cwqze88 , DK123694 Academy of Medical Sciences, https://ror.org/00c489v88 , SGL020\1018 Wellcome Trust , 209492/Z/17/Z , WT101671 Medical Research Council, https://ror.org/03x94j517 , MR/M009157/1 , MC_UP_1605/15 European Commission, https://ror.org/00k4n6c32 , 259735, ENSAT-CANCER Sao Paolo Research Foundation , 2024/14165-6 Harvard Medical School, https://ror.org/03wevmz92 , Michail Papamichail, MD, PhD Fellowship Abbreviations ACC Adrenocortical Carcinoma Gln Glutamine GOF gain-of-function LOF loss-of-function βCat β-catenin DON 6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine References 1. ↵ Fassnacht M , Terzolo M , Allolio B , et al. Combination chemotherapy in advanced adrenocortical carcinoma . N Engl J Med 2012 ; 366 ( 23 ): 2189 – 97 . DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1200966 . OpenUrl CrossRef PubMed Web of Science 2. ↵ Fassnacht M , Dekkers OM , Else T , et al. 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Your Personal Message CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Share Glutamine antagonism suppresses tumor growth in adrenocortical carcinoma through inhibition of de novo nucleotide biosynthesis Vasileios Chortis , Kleiton Silva Borges , Cong-Hui Yao , Claudio Ribeiro , Luis Fernando Nagano , Mesut Berber , Alessandro Prete , Lukáš Najdekr , Michail E. Klontzas , Andris Jankevics , Pedro Vendramini , Jean Lucas Kremer , Liam Kelley , Sathuwarman Raveenthiraraj , Stylianos Tsagarakis , Magdalena Macech , Ivana D. Pupovac , Thomas G Papathomas , Betul Haykir , Catherine Winder , Marcus Quinkler , M. Conall Dennedy , Grethe Å. Ueland , Felix Beuschlein , Antoine Tabarin , Martin Fassnacht , Angela E. Taylor , Darko Kastelan , Urszula Ambroziak , Dimitra A. Vassiliadi , Katja Kiseljak-Vassiliades , Irina Bancos , Diana L. Carlone , Warwick B. Dunn , Wiebke Arlt , Marcia C. Haigis , David T. Breault bioRxiv 2025.09.28.674326; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.28.674326 Share This Article: Copy Citation Tools Glutamine antagonism suppresses tumor growth in adrenocortical carcinoma through inhibition of de novo nucleotide biosynthesis Vasileios Chortis , Kleiton Silva Borges , Cong-Hui Yao , Claudio Ribeiro , Luis Fernando Nagano , Mesut Berber , Alessandro Prete , Lukáš Najdekr , Michail E. Klontzas , Andris Jankevics , Pedro Vendramini , Jean Lucas Kremer , Liam Kelley , Sathuwarman Raveenthiraraj , Stylianos Tsagarakis , Magdalena Macech , Ivana D. Pupovac , Thomas G Papathomas , Betul Haykir , Catherine Winder , Marcus Quinkler , M. Conall Dennedy , Grethe Å. Ueland , Felix Beuschlein , Antoine Tabarin , Martin Fassnacht , Angela E. Taylor , Darko Kastelan , Urszula Ambroziak , Dimitra A. Vassiliadi , Katja Kiseljak-Vassiliades , Irina Bancos , Diana L. Carlone , Warwick B. Dunn , Wiebke Arlt , Marcia C. Haigis , David T. 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