Prolyl-tRNA synthetase inhibition promotes cell death in SK-MEL-2 cells through GCN2-ATF4 pathway activation

Protein translation is highly activated in cancer tissues through oncogenic mutations and amplifications, and this can support survival and aberrant proliferation. Therefore, blocking translation could be a promising way to block cancer progression. The process of charging a cognate amino acid to tRNA, a crucial step in protein synthesis, is mediated by tRNA synthetases such as prolyl tRNA synthetase (PRS). Interestingly, unlike pan-translation inhibitors, we demonstrated that a novel small molecule PRS inhibitor (T-3861174) induced cell death in several tumor cell lines including SK-MEL-2 without complete suppression of translation. Additionally, our findings indicated that T-3861174-induced cell death was caused by activation of the GCN2-ATF4 pathway. Furthermore, the PRS inhibitor exhibited significant anti-tumor activity in several xenograft models without severe body weight losses. These results indicate that PRS is a druggable target, and suggest that T-3861174 is a potential therapeutic agent for cancer therapy. •A novel small molecule prolyl tRNA synthetase inhibitor, T-3861174, was tested.•T-3861174 induced cell death in several tumor cell lines.•T-3861174 cytotoxicity was mediated by the GCN2-ATF4 pathway.•Prolyl tRNA synthetase inhibition hindered tumor growth in vivo in xenograft models.