ATP citrate lyase is an essential player of the metabolic rewiring induced by PTEN loss during T-ALL development.
Alterations inactivating the tumor suppressor gene PTEN drive the development of solid and hematological cancers, such as T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), whereby PTEN loss defines poor-prognosis patients. We investigated the metabolic rewiring induced by PTEN loss in T-ALL, aiming at identifying novel metabolic vulnerabilities. We showed that the enzyme ATP citrate lyase (ACLY) is strictly required for the transformation of thymic immature progenitors and for the growth of human T-ALL, which remain dependent on ACLY activity even upon transformation. Whereas PTEN mutant mice all died within 17 weeks, the concomitant ACLY deletion prevented disease initiation in 70% of the animals, where it prevented the apoptosis of pre-malignant DP thymocytes by up-regulating BCL-2. Transcriptomic and metabolic analysis of primary T-ALL cells next translated our findings to the human pathology, showing that PTEN-altered T-ALL cells selectively activate ACLY and are specifically sensitive to its genetic targeting. ACLY activation thus represents a metabolic vulnerability with therapeutic potential for high-risk T-ALL patients.