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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cell Dev. Biol.

Sec. Cancer Cell Biology

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1642006

This article is part of the Research TopicRNA Helicases: Pioneering Therapeutic Avenues in Cancer TreatmentView all articles

Inhibiting the RNA helicase DDX3X in Burkitt lymphoma induces oxydative stress and impedes tumor progression in xenografts

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal, Montreal, Canada
  • 2McGill University, Department of Medicine, Division of Clinical and Translational Research,, Moontral, Canada
  • 3Universite de Montreal Institut de Recherche en Immunologie et en Cancerologie, Montreal, Canada
  • 4Universite de Montreal Departement de Microbiologie Infectiologie et Immunologie, Montreal, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Burkitt Lymphoma (BL), an aggressive B-cell lymphoma driven by MYC translocations, requires intensive chemotherapy treatments which deliver high effectiveness yet increase future risks of developing secondary malignancies. We have previously shown that DDX3X, an RNA helicase frequently mutated in BL, is essential for B cell lymphomagenesis in mice. To assess if DDX3X could therefore represent a promising therapeutic target for BL, we tested two DDX3X inhibitors, the well characterized RK-33 and the more potent newly developed C1, in three BL cell lines (CA46, Raji, Daudi). We found that the three cell lines exhibited differential sensitivities to the drugs in vitro, with Daudi being the most susceptible and Raji the most resistant. In vivo, RK-33 treatment in a xenograft BL model reduced tumor progression in all cell lines, albeit with variable efficacy compared to the clinical drug Pevonedistat, and again with the Daudi cells being the most responsive to the treatment. Transcriptomic and proteomic analyses indicated that RK-33-mediated inhibition of DDX3X, and DDX3X ablation through siRNA affects oxidative phosphorylation among other pathways and leads to an increase of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). A CRISPR chemogenomic screen to identify synthetic lethalities linked to RK-33 implicated enzymes of the glutathione synthesis pathway and the Keap1-Nrf2-ARE pathway. We therefore tested the inhibition of the glutathione pathway with buthionine sulfoximine and showed that it reduced the CC50 of RK-33 in BL cells lines. Our findings not only support DDX3X as a therapeutic target in BL but also provide evidence for a combinatorial treatment strategy to improve the efficacy of current treatments.

Keywords: RNA helicase, DDX3 as a potential target, Burkitt lymphoma (BL), DDX3 inhibitor, Xenograft, ATP-dependent RNA helicase

Received: 05 Jun 2025; Accepted: 09 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Beauchemin, Dalloul, Piskor, Calderon, Bertomeu and Möröy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Hugues Beauchemin, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal, Montreal, Canada
Tarik Möröy, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal, Montreal, Canada

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