Abstract
HER family is composed by four members which play a major role in cancer development. EGFR, HER2 and HER3 are well described and targeted with therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. HER4, the last one, is poorly described with a contentious role in cancerogenesis. Nowadays, there is no therapeutic antibody targeting HER4 in clinic. Four isoforms of the receptor are addressed to the plasma membrane and are called JMa/CYT1; JMa/CYT2; JMb/CYT1 and JMb/CYT2. JMa isoforms are activated by cleavage, but not JMb isoforms. Following their activation, JMa isoform cleavage releases the intracellular part of the receptor called 4ICD. This part can be directed to the nucleus or others subcellular compartments, involving HER4 in oncogenic or tumor suppressor signalling. Because a pro-apoptotic activity of 4ICD and its main ligand NRG1 have been described, we studied JMa isoforms signaling to determine their roles in cancer. We demonstrated that NRG1 induce a tumor suppressor signalling from JMa/CYT1 and an oncogenic signalling from JMa/CYT2. Based on these results, we developed an innovative screening for anti-HER4 antibodies by whole cell panning with phage display. To this end, we used NRG1- stimulated cells expressing JMa/CYT1 isoforms. We characterized four anti-HER4 antibodies and functions of some of them are affected and modulated by NRG1. Two antibodies were characterized as agonistic anti-HER4 antibodies and induce cell death of cancer cells by different mechanisms. Like NRG1, one of them induce mitochondrial localization of 4ICD-CYT1 to induce cell death. These promising results pave the way to a therapeutic targeting of HER4 receptor with agonistic antibodies to treat cancer