Abstract As most of treatment options do not work very well for metastatic cancer. Patients with metastatic cancer have a greatly lower survival rate compared with patients with local cancer. Metastasis remains a life-threat to cancer patients and an unmet medical need. The RBP Hu antigen R (HuR) is overexpressed in virtually all malignancies tested, including breast cancer. Cytoplasmic HuR accumulation correlates with high-grade malignancy, poor distant disease-free survival and serves as a prognostic factor for poor clinical outcome in breast cancer. HuR promotes tumorigenesis by promoting mRNA stability and translation of proteins implicated in proliferation, survival, angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis. We found that silencing of HuR inhibited cell invasion in vitro in breast cancer. Using RIP-seq (ribonucleoprotein immunoprecipitation-sequencing), a transcription factor FOXQ1, which is recently revealed to implicate in breast cancer invasion and metastasis processes, is found to be a direct HuR target. Furthermore, exogenous introduction of FOXQ1 can rescue cell invasive ability inhibited by HuR knockout. Taken together, HuR-FOXQ1 signaling axis is a potential target for blocking breast cancer metastasis. RNA-binding proteins had previously been considered “undruggable” due to lack of a well-defined binding pocket for target RNAs. Using high throughput screening followed by structure-based rational design and lead optimization, we have identified small molecules that inhibit HuR-mRNA interaction at nM to sub-µM potency. Our lead compound, KH-3, potently inhibits breast cancer cell growth and decreases cell invasion in vitro similar to HuR knockout, as well as increasing the expression of epithelial marker E-cadherin. FOXQ1 overexpression abolishes the effect of KH-3 on blocking metastasis in breast cancer cells, demonstrating that the HuR inhibitor KH-3 inhibits cell metastasis by blocking FOXQ1 function. Moreover, KH-3 treatment disrupts HuR-FOXQ1 interaction in RNP-IP and FOXQ1 3′-UTR luciferase reporter assays. In vivo efficacy studies show that KH-3 not only exhibits potent antitumor efficacy in orthotopic xenograft models of breast cancer, but also efficiently blocks lung metastasis in experimental metastatic cancer model. In conclusion, we identified a potent and specific small molecule disrupter of HuR-FOXQ1 interaction for potential novel anti-metastatic therapy of breast cancer with HuR overexpression. Citation Format: Xiaoqing Wu, Gulhumay Gardashova, Lan Lan, Yu Zhan, Jiajun Liu, Dan A. Dixon, Jeffrey Aubé, Danny R. Welch, Liang Xu. Blocking breast cancer metastasis by targeting HuR-FOXQ1 signaling axis abstract. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 867.