Driven to death: Inhibition of farnesylation increases Ras activity and promotes growth arrest and cell death [corrected].

To improve cancer outcomes, investigators are turning increasingly to small molecule medicines that disrupt vital signaling cascades, inhibit malignant growth, or induce apoptosis. One vital signaling molecule is Ras, and a key step in Ras activation is membrane anchoring of Ras through prenylation, the C-terminal addition of a lipid anchor. Small molecule inhibitors of farnesyltransferase (FTI), the enzyme most often responsible for prenylating Ras, showed clinical promise, but development of FTIs such as tipifarnib has been stalled by uncertainty about their mechanism of action, because Ras seemed unimpeded in tipifarnib-treated samples. Interpretation was further complicated by the numerous proteins that may be farnesylated, as well as availability of an alternate prenylation pathway, geranylgeranylation. Our initial observations of varied response by cancer cell lines to tipifarnib led us to evaluate the role of FTI in Ras signal alteration using various tumor models. We describe our novel counterintuitive finding that endogenous Ras activity increases in cancer cell lines with low endogenous Ras activity when farnesyltransferase is inhibited by either tipifarnib or short hairpin RNA. In response to tipifarnib, variable growth arrest and/or cell death correlated with levels of activated extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK) and p38 mitogenactivated protein kinase (MAPK). Sensitivity to tipifarnib treatment was shown by growth inhibition and by an increase in subdiploid cell numbers; cells with such sensitivity had increased activation of ERK and p38 MAPK. Because Ras must be prenylated to be active, our findings suggest that geranylgeranylated N-Ras or K-Ras B interacts differently with downstream effector proteins in sensitive cancer cells responding to tipifarnib, switching the balance from cell proliferation to growth inhibition [corrected].