JQ1, a Potential Therapeutic Molecule for Myeloid Leukemia with PTEN Deficiency

Autor: Shelly Lensing, Yan Yan, Jason E. Farrar, Peter D. Emanuel, Natalia Colorado, Y. Lucy Liu, Delli Robinson, Michele Cottler-Fox, Nicholas J Baltz
Rok vydání: 2016
Předmět:
Zdroj: Blood. 128:5899-5899
ISSN: 1528-0020
0006-4971
Popis: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a hematologic malignancy that continues to have high relapse and treatment-related mortality rates, despite recent advances in clinical management and therapy. Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors inhibit the activity of the JAK/STAT pathway and have demonstrated some clinical responses in AML patients. However, survival analysis suggests that more than half of AML patients do not benefit from treatment with JAK inhibitors. Furthermore, PTEN deficiency is frequently found in patients in the late stages of cancer, which causes hyperactivated AKT and MAPK pathways. However, emerging data suggests that leukemia cells with PTEN deficiency are resistant to MAPK inhibitors. Over the past decade, it has been demonstrated that dysregulated epigenetics play an important role in myeloid leukemogenesis. The bromodomain and extraterminal domain (BET) family includes adaptor proteins Brd2, Brd3, Brd4, and Brdt that regulate gene expression via binding to acetylated chromatin and subsequently activating RNA Polymerase II driven transcriptional elongation, resulting in the promotion of gene expression. BRD4 is a BET protein required for disease maintenance in AML. JQ1 is a small molecule that interferes with transcriptional regulators, such as BRD4, by preventing them from interacting with acetylated regions of the genome and thus inhibiting the transcriptional activation of BRD4 target genes. Prior research in lymphocytic leukemia cell lines suggests that JQ1 also decreases STAT5-dependent gene transcriptional activities. We hypothesize that the inhibition of BET proteins may correct the over-activated transcriptional activities in myeloid leukemia cells and induce disease regression. We tested our hypothesis in PTEN deficient myeloid leukemia cell lines, TF-1a and K562, and used human cord blood mononuclear cells (CB) for normal cell comparison. Methods: 1) To test whether JQ1 can inhibit colony formation, we seeded cells on 0.3% agar and McCoys' 5A medium supplemented with nutrients and 15% fetal bovine serum, without cytokines, and added JQ1 diluents to the cultures at concentrations of 32.5-1000nM overnight after the cultures were established. 2) To test whether JQ1 can inhibit leukemia cell proliferation, we cultured cells in liquid medium with JQ1 for 48-72 hours, and quantified the viable cells using alamarBlue® assay. 3) To investigate whether JAK/STAT5 activity is altered by JQ1 in leukemia cells, we quantified phosphorylated STAT5 (pSTAT5) in cells via flow cytometry and western blot. We treated the cells with JQ1 at various concentrations for 2 hours and then stimulated the cells for 15 minutes in medium with 0.5% BSA and 10ng/mL GM-CSF prior to staining the cells with anti-pStat5 (pY694) antibody conjugated with Alexa Fluor® 647 for FACS analysis or lysing the cells for western blot analysis. Results: In the colony formation assay, we found that TF-1a cells were more sensitive to JQ1 than the CB cells and K562, with an IC50 of 62.5-125 nM for TF-1a cells (p Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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