YAP1 Withdrawal in Hepatoblastoma Drives Therapeutic Differentiation of Tumor Cells to Functional Hepatocyte-Like Cells

Abstract

Background and aims: Despite surgical and chemotherapeutic advances, the 5-year survival rate for stage IV hepatoblastoma (HB), the predominant pediatric liver tumor, remains at 27%. Yes-associated protein 1 (YAP1) and β-catenin co-activation occurs in 80% of children's HB; however, a lack of conditional genetic models precludes tumor maintenance exploration. Thus, the need for a targeted therapy remains unmet. Given the predominance of YAP1 and β-catenin activation in HB, we sought to evaluate YAP1 as a therapeutic target in HB.

Approach and results: We engineered the conditional HB murine model using hydrodynamic injection to deliver transposon plasmids encoding inducible YAP1^S127A , constitutive β-catenin^DelN90 , and a luciferase reporter to murine liver. Tumor regression was evaluated using bioluminescent imaging, tumor landscape characterized using RNA and ATAC sequencing, and DNA footprinting. Here we show that YAP1^S127A withdrawal mediates more than 90% tumor regression with survival for 230+ days in mice. YAP1^S127A withdrawal promotes apoptosis in a subset of tumor cells, and in remaining cells induces a cell fate switch that drives therapeutic differentiation of HB tumors into Ki-67-negative hepatocyte-like HB cells ("HbHeps") with hepatocyte-like morphology and mature hepatocyte gene expression. YAP1^S127A withdrawal drives the formation of hbHeps by modulating liver differentiation transcription factor occupancy. Indeed, tumor-derived hbHeps, consistent with their reprogrammed transcriptional landscape, regain partial hepatocyte function and rescue liver damage in mice.

Conclusions: YAP1^S127A withdrawal, without silencing oncogenic β-catenin, significantly regresses hepatoblastoma, providing in vivo data to support YAP1 as a therapeutic target for HB. YAP1^S127A withdrawal alone sufficiently drives long-term regression in HB, as it promotes cell death in a subset of tumor cells and modulates transcription factor occupancy to reverse the fate of residual tumor cells to mimic functional hepatocytes.