A WEE1 Inhibitor Analog of AZD1775 Maintains Synergy with Cisplatin and Demonstrates Reduced Single-Agent Cytotoxicity in Medulloblastoma Cells

The current treatment for medulloblastoma includes surgical resection, radiation, and cytotoxic chemotherapy. Although this approach has improved survival rates, the high doses of chemotherapy required for clinical efficacy often result in lasting neurocognitive defects and other adverse events. Therefore, the development of chemosensitizing agents that allow dose reductions of cytotoxic agents, limiting their adverse effects but maintaining their clinical efficacy, would be an attractive approach to treat medulloblastoma. We previously identified WEE1 kinase as a new molecular target for medulloblastoma from an integrated genomic analysis of gene expression and a kinome-wide siRNA screen of medulloblastoma cells and tissue. In addition, we demonstrated that WEE1 prevents DNA damage-induced cell death by cisplatin and that the WEE1 inhibitor AZD1775 displays synergistic activity with cisplatin. AZD1775 was developed as a WEE1 inhibitor from an initial hit from a high-throughput screen. However, given the lack of structure-activity data for AZD1775, we developed a small series of analogs to determine the requirements for WEE1 inhibition and further examine the effects of WEE1 inhibition in medulloblastoma. Interestingly, the compounds that inhibited WEE1 in the same nanomolar range as AZD1775 had significantly reduced single-agent cytotoxicity compared with AZD1775 and displayed synergistic activity with cisplatin in medulloblastoma cells. The potent cytotoxicity of AZD1775, unrelated to WEE1 inhibition, may result in dose-limiting toxicities and exacerbate adverse effects; therefore, WEE1 inhibitors that demonstrate low cytotoxicity could be dosed at higher concentrations to chemosensitize the tumor and potentiate the effect of DNA-damaging agents such as cisplatin.