MYBL2 maintains stemness and promotes theta-mediated end joining in triple negative breast cancer

Abstract

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a poor prognosis due to limited treatment options and high metastasis risk. Breast cancer (BC) stem/progenitor cells, also known as tumour initiating cells, are a small, difficult to target population within the tumour responsible for metastasis and therapy resistance. MYBL2 overexpression is commonly linked to poor prognosis and metastasis but its role in BC stem/progenitor cells remains elusive. To determine the role of MYBL2 in BC stem/progenitor cells we generated TNBC cell lines with inducible MYBL2 downregulation. Our findings reveal that elevated MYBL2 is essential for self-renewal, DNA repair, and replication stress response in these cells and lowering MYBL2 impairs stemness and self-renewal both in vitro and in vivo. Accordingly, our functional and mechanistic analyses indicate that high-MYBL2 stem/progenitor cells exhibit increased sensitivity to Pol{theta} inhibitors which is lost upon MYBL2 downregulation due to transcriptional suppression. Combining Pol{theta} inhibitors with ATR inhibitors further enhances this sensitivity, in vitro and ex vivo. This study thus identifies Pol{theta}/ATR inhibition as a synthetic lethality strategy to eradicate BC stem/progenitor cells and underscores MYBL2 expression as a biomarker for patient stratification in this treatment.