Perturbation of the Warburg effect increases the sensitivity of cancer cells to TRAIL-induced cell death

• Warburg effect was closely associated with the TRAIL-induced apoptosis.
• Silencing of Warburg effect-related PTBP1 increased sensitivity to the apoptosis.
• PTBP1 could be used as a possible target molecule to conquer the resistance to TRAIL.

Tumor necrosis-factor (TNF)-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a member of the TNF-superfamily that selectively induces apoptosis through death receptors (DRs) 4 and/ or DR5 in cancer cells, without affecting normal cells. Unfortunately, many clinical studies have shown that cancer cells acquire TRAIL-resistance and thus avoid TRAIL-induced apoptosis. In the current study, we newly found that PTBP1, a splicer protein that plays an important role in energy metabolism is highly expressed in TRAIL-resistant human colon cancer DLD-1. Interestingly, silencing PTBP1 by using siRNA for PTBP1 (siR-PTBP1) resulted in a significant increase in TRAIL-sensitivity along with the switching of pyruvate kinase muscle (PKM) isoforms from PKM2 to PKM1, leading to impaired Warburg effect, because the intracellular ATP levels were significantly increased and the production of lactate decreased. Notably, siR-PTBP1 canceled the resistance by increasing the expression level of DR5 and effectively inducing the translocation of DR5 to the cell surface membrane. Also, siR-PTBP1 up-regulated the expression level of CCN1, which contributed to the enhanced sensitivity to TRAIL-induced apoptosis. These findings indicate that silencing PTBP1, thus impairing the Warburg effect positively affected TRAIL-induced apoptosis and that this splicer protein may thus serve as a possible target molecule to cancel the resistance of cancer cells to TRAIL.