Project description:<p>Acute myeloid leukemia is an aggressive clonal malignancy of the bone marrow that is the direct result of sequential acquisition of mutations in a single lineage of cells. In this study, we investigate a model in which this mutational acquisition occurs serially in long-lived self-renewing hematopoietic stem cells eventually resulting in frank acute myeloid leukemia. Coding mutations in multiple AML patients were identified using exome sequencing followed by sanger sequencing validation. The level of these mutations was then assessed in residual hematopoietic stem cells from each patient using targeted deep sequencing. These population-level estimates of mutant allele burden were then validated in single cell assays targeted to the identified mutations. This allowed for determination of the order of acquisition of the mutations that preceded the development of the leukemia. The results of this study identify pre-leukemic hematopoietic stem cell clones that could contribute to patient relapse and outcome.</p>
Project description:The p53 inhibitor MDMX is overexpressed in the vast majority of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Utilizing hematopoietic stem cells from four non-leukemic/pre-leukemic murine models, we performed bulk transcriptomic analysis to evaluate the impact of Mdmx overexpression.
Project description:Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive hematological disorder comprised of a hierarchy of quiescent leukemic stem cells and fast proliferating blasts with limited self-renewal ability. Significant plasticity in the AML epigenome and metabolome results in a high rate of drug resistance and relapse, with extremely low 2-year survival rates in the poorest cytogenetic risk patients. The current backbone of clinical induction chemotherapy reduces total disease burden, but does not deplete leukemic stem cells which reconstitute the disease in vivo, and also suffers from severe toxicity of healthy hematopoietic cells. Whilst much work has been done to identify epigenetic vulnerabilities in AML, little is known about protein dynamics, and here we explored the therapeutic inhibition of highly specific CKS1-dependent protein degradation. We report a dual role for CKS1-depdent protein degradation in specifically targeting AML, whilst protecting normal hematopoietic cells from chemotherapeutic toxicity.
Project description:Understanding the contribution of abnormal genetic and epigenetic programs to acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is necessary for the integrated design of targeted therapies. To investigate this, we determined the effect of epigenetic reprogramming on leukemic behavior by generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from AML patient samples harboring MLL rearrangements. AML-derived iPSCs (AML-iPSCs) retained leukemic mutations, but reset leukemic DNA methylation/gene expression patterns and lacked leukemic potential. However, when differentiated into hematopoietic cells, AML-iPSCs reacquired the ability to give rise to leukemia in vivo and reestablished leukemic methylation/gene expression patterns, including an aberrant MLL signature, indicating that epigenetic reprogramming was insufficient to eliminate leukemic behavior. In one case, we identified distinct AML-iPSC KRAS mutant and wildtype subclones that demonstrated differential growth properties and therapeutic susceptibilities, predicting KRAS wildtype clonal relapse due to increased cytarabine resistance. Increased cytarabine resistance was further observed in a cohort of KRAS wildtype MLL-rearranged AML samples, demonstrating the utility of AML-iPSCs in predicting subclonal relapse and facilitating clonal targeting in AML.
Project description:Understanding the contribution of abnormal genetic and epigenetic programs to acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is necessary for the integrated design of targeted therapies. To investigate this, we determined the effect of epigenetic reprogramming on leukemic behavior by generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from AML patient samples harboring MLL rearrangements. AML-derived iPSCs (AML-iPSCs) retained leukemic mutations, but reset leukemic DNA methylation/gene expression patterns and lacked leukemic potential. However, when differentiated into hematopoietic cells, AML-iPSCs reacquired the ability to give rise to leukemia in vivo and reestablished leukemic methylation/gene expression patterns, including an aberrant MLL signature, indicating that epigenetic reprogramming was insufficient to eliminate leukemic behavior. In one case, we identified distinct AML-iPSC KRAS mutant and wildtype subclones that demonstrated differential growth properties and therapeutic susceptibilities, predicting KRAS wildtype clonal relapse due to increased cytarabine resistance. Increased cytarabine resistance was further observed in a cohort of KRAS wildtype MLL-rearranged AML samples, demonstrating the utility of AML-iPSCs in predicting subclonal relapse and facilitating clonal targeting in AML.
Project description:Understanding the contribution of abnormal genetic and epigenetic programs to acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is necessary for the integrated design of targeted therapies. To investigate this, we determined the effect of epigenetic reprogramming on leukemic behavior by generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from AML patient samples harboring MLL rearrangements. AML-derived iPSCs (AML-iPSCs) retained leukemic mutations, but reset leukemic DNA methylation/gene expression patterns and lacked leukemic potential. However, when differentiated into hematopoietic cells, AML-iPSCs reacquired the ability to give rise to leukemia in vivo and reestablished leukemic methylation/gene expression patterns, including an aberrant MLL signature, indicating that epigenetic reprogramming was insufficient to eliminate leukemic behavior. In one case, we identified distinct AML-iPSC KRAS mutant and wildtype subclones that demonstrated differential growth properties and therapeutic susceptibilities, predicting KRAS wildtype clonal relapse due to increased cytarabine resistance. Increased cytarabine resistance was further observed in a cohort of KRAS wildtype MLL-rearranged AML samples, demonstrating the utility of AML-iPSCs in predicting subclonal relapse and facilitating clonal targeting in AML. This SuperSeries is composed of the SubSeries listed below.
Project description:Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a clonal hematopoietic malignancy, characterized by expansion of immature leukemic blasts in the bone marrow. In AML, specific tyrosine kinases have been implicated in leukemogenesis, and are associated with poor treatment outcome. However, targeted therapy using kinase inhibitors (KIs) has had limited success, and may be improved by proper patient selection. We performed phosphotyrosine (pY) based, label-free phosphoproteomics to identify hyperphosphorylated, active kinases in two FLT3+ AML Pt samples.
Project description:Pre-leukemic stem cells (pre-LSCs) provide a reservoir of cells that evolve to acute leukemia and cause relapse following chemotherapy. We postulated that quiescence of pre-LSCs is an important mechanism of therapeutic resistance. Using a doxycycline-inducible H2B-GFP transgene in a mouse model of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, we show that long-term self-renewal, clonal evolution and resistance to chemo-radiation are intrinsically linked to restricted cell cycle. We show that restricted cell cycle of pre-LSCs requires the presence of the CDK inhibitor p21, with absence of p21 leading to chemosensitivity and clonal extinction by loss of asymmetric cell division and terminal differentiation. These results provide a model to identify and test strategies to eradicate an important source of clonal evolution and leukemic relapse.