Chemical-Genetic Interrogation of Nuclear Size Control Reveals Cancer-Specific Effects on Cell Migration and Invasion

Lower survival rates for many cancer types correlate with increases or decreases in nuclear size/scaling in a tumor-type/tissue-specific manner. Postulating that nuclear size changes confer a fitness advantage on tumor cells, we screened for FDA/EMA-approved compounds that reverse tumor nuclear size changes in cell lines from three such tumor types: prostate adenocarcinoma, colonic adenocarcinoma, and small-cell squamous lung cancer. We found distinct, largely non-overlapping sets of compounds that either rectify or exacerbate nuclear size changes for each tumor type. Nuclear size phenotypes across cell lines clustered particular classes of compounds including serotonin uptake inhibitors, cyclo-oxygenase inhibitors, beta-adrenergic receptor agonists, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and Na+/K+ ATPase inhibitors. Nearly all compounds selected for further investigation inhibited cell migration and/or invasion, suggesting that targeting nuclear size control pathways in chemotherapy regimens could improve patient survival.