MST1/Hippo promoter gene methylation predicts poor survival in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma in the IFCT-GFPC-0701 MAPS Phase 3 trial

Background The Mesothelioma Avastin Cisplatin Pemetrexed Study (MAPS/NCT00651456) phase 3 trial demonstrated the superiority of bevacizumab plus pemetrexed–cisplatin triplet over chemotherapy alone in 448 malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) patients. Here, we evaluated the prognostic role of Hippo pathway gene promoter methylation. Methods Promoter methylations were assayed using methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction in samples from 223 MAPS patients, evaluating their prognostic value for overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival in univariate and multivariate analyses. MST1 inactivation effects on invasion, soft agar growth, apoptosis, proliferation, and YAP/TAZ activation were investigated in human mesothelial cell lines. Results STK4 (MST1) gene promoter methylation was detected in 19/223 patients tested (8.5%), predicting poorer OS in univariate and multivariate analyses (adjusted HR: 1.78, 95% CI (1.09–2.93), p = 0.022). Internal validation by bootstrap resampling supported this prognostic impact. MST1 inactivation reduced cellular basal apoptotic activity while increasing proliferation, invasion, and soft agar or in suspension growth, resulting in nuclear YAP accumulation, yet TAZ cytoplasmic retention in mesothelial cell lines. YAP silencing decreased invasion of MST1-depleted mesothelial cell lines. Conclusions MST1/hippo kinase expression loss is predictive of poor prognosis in MPM patients, leading to nuclear YAP accumulation and electing YAP as a putative target for therapeutic intervention in human MPM.