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Martinez De Villarreal, JaimeAuthor

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November 4, 2025
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Tumor and Stromal Cell Targeting with Nintedanib and Alpelisib Overcomes Intrinsic Bladder Cancer Resistance

Publicated to: Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. 22 (5): 616-629 - 2023-05-01 22(5), DOI: 10.1158/1535-7163.MCT-21-0667

Authors:

Marques, Miriam; Corral, Sonia; Sanchez-Diaz, Maria; del Pozo, Natalia; Martinez de Villarreal, Jaime; Schweifer, Norbert; Zagorac, Ivana; Hilberg, Frank; Real, Francisco X
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Affiliations

Boehringer Ingelheim RCV GmbH & Co KG, Vienna, Austria - Author
Boehringer Ingelheim RCV GmbH & Co. KG, Vienna, Austria. - Author
CIBERONC, Madrid, Spain - Author
Ctr Nacl Invest Oncol, Melchor Fernandez Almagro 3, Madrid 28029, Spain - Author
Epithelial Carcinogenesis Group, Spanish National Cancer Centre-CNIO, Madrid, Spain. - Author
Molecular Genetics of Angiogenesis Group, Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research-CNIC, Madrid, Spain. - Author
Spanish Natl Canc Ctr CNIO, Epithelial Carcinogenesis Grp, Madrid, Spain - Author
Spanish Natl Ctr Cardiovasc Res CNIC, Mol Genet Angiogenesis Grp, Madrid, Spain - Author
Univ Pompeu Fabra, Dept Med & Ciencies Vida, Barcelona, Spain - Author
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Abstract

Bladder cancer is a highly prevalent tumor, requiring the urgent development of novel therapies, especially for locally advanced and metastatic disease. Nintedanib is a potent anti -fibrotic angio-kinase inhibitor, which has shown clinical efficacy in combination with chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Nintedanib inhibits fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFRs), validated targets in patients with bladder cancer harboring FGFR3/2 genetic altera-tions. Here, we aimed at studying its mechanisms of action to understand therapy resistance, identify markers predictive of response, and improve the design of future clinical trials. We have used a panel of genetically well-characterized human blad-der cancer cells to identify the molecular and transcriptomic changes induced upon treatment with nintedanib, in vitro and in vivo, at the tumor and stroma cell levels. We showed that bladder cancer cells display an intrinsic resistance to nintedanib treatment in vitro, independently of their FGFR3 status. How-ever, nintedanib has higher antitumor activity on mouse xeno-grafts. We have identified PI3K activation as a resistance mech-anism against nintedanib in bladder cancer and evidenced that the combination of nintedanib with the PI3K inhibitor alpelisib has synergistic antitumor activity. Treatment with this combi-nation is associated with cell-cycle inhibition at the tumoral and stromal levels and potent nontumor cell autonomous effects on a-smooth muscle actin-positive tumor infiltrating cells and tumor vasculature. The combination of nintedanib with PI3K inhibitors not only reversed bladder cancer resistance to ninte-danib but also enhanced its antiangiogenic effects.
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Keywords

AlpelisibAnimalsCell line, tumorHumansLung neoplasmsMiceNintedanibPhosphatidylinositol 3-kinasesStromal cellsUrinary bladder neoplasms

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

Independientemente del impacto esperado determinado por el canal de difusión, es importante destacar el impacto real observado de la propia aportación.

Según las diferentes agencias de indexación, el número de citas acumuladas por esta publicación hasta la fecha 2026-01-01:

  • WoS: 1
  • Europe PMC: 2
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Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2026-01-01:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 3.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 3 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 2.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 2 (Altmetric).
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Leadership analysis of institutional authors

This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: Austria.

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Awards linked to the item

We thank Roland Varecka and Donat Alpar for excellent technical assistance with the generation of the next-generation sequencing libraries and for sequencing, Irene Millan for her assistance in the integrated RNA-seq analysis, Flora Diaz for help with in vivo experiments and animal care, and the Biology Section of the Experimental Therapeutics Program and the Histopathology Unit of CNIO for valuable contributions. This work was supported, in part, by a research grant from Boehringer Ingelheim and by a grant from Fundacion Cientifica de la Asociacion Espanola Contra el Cancer to F.X. Real. CNIO is supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades as a Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2015- 0510, cofinanced by the Fondo Social Europeo. S. Corral was supported by Fellowship PRE2018-085808 from Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, cofinanced by Fondo Social Europeo. I. Zagorac received a Juan de la Cierva Fellowship from Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades.
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