1区 · 医学
Article
作者: Angeli, Andrea ; Karsa, Mawar ; Raoufi-Rad, Newsha ; Osterman, Andrei L ; Gao, Jixuan ; Lim, James ; Imamura, Toshihiko ; Chudakova, Daria A ; Middlemiss, Shiloh M C ; Kwek, Alan ; Kavallaris, Maria ; Kees, Ursula R ; McCarroll, Joshua ; Norris, Murray D ; Kusnadi, Eric P ; Clifton, Molly ; Liu, Bing ; Jung, MoonSun ; Supuran, Claudiu T ; Bongers, Angelika ; Scott, David A ; Flemming, Claudia ; Henderson, Michelle J ; Somers, Klaartje ; Pandher, Ruby ; Davis, Thomas P ; Turner, Nigel ; Hannan, Ross D ; Wen, Victoria W ; Failes, Tim W ; Haber, Michelle ; Hannan, Kate M ; Forgham, Helen ; Gudkov, Andrei V ; Mayoh, Chelsea ; Pearson, Richard B ; Osborne, Brenna
Survival rates for pediatric patients suffering from mixed lineage leukemia (MLL)-rearranged leukemia remain below 50% and more targeted, less toxic therapies are urgently needed. A screening method optimized to discover cytotoxic compounds selective for MLL-rearranged leukemia identified CCI-006 as a novel inhibitor of MLL-rearranged and CALM-AF10 translocated leukemias that share common leukemogenic pathways. CCI-006 inhibited mitochondrial respiration and induced mitochondrial membrane depolarization and apoptosis in a subset (7/11, 64%) of MLL-rearranged leukemia cell lines within a few hours of treatment. The unresponsive MLL-rearranged leukemia cells did not undergo mitochondrial membrane depolarization or apoptosis despite a similar attenuation of mitochondrial respiration by the compound. In comparison to the sensitive cells, the unresponsive MLL-rearranged leukemia cells were characterized by a more glycolytic metabolic phenotype, exemplified by a more pronounced sensitivity to glycolysis inhibitors and elevated HIF1α expression. Silencing of HIF1α expression sensitized an intrinsically unresponsive MLL-rearranged leukemia cell to CCI-006, indicating that this pathway plays a role in determining sensitivity to the compound. In addition, unresponsive MLL-rearranged leukemia cells expressed increased levels of MEIS1, an important leukemogenic MLL target gene that plays a role in regulating metabolic phenotype through HIF1α. MEIS1 expression was also variable in a pediatric MLL-rearranged ALL patient dataset, highlighting the existence of a previously undescribed metabolic variability in MLL-rearranged leukemia that may contribute to the heterogeneity of the disease. This study thus identified a novel small molecule that rapidly kills MLL-rearranged leukemia cells by targeting a metabolic vulnerability in a subset of low HIF1α/low MEIS1-expressing MLL-rearranged leukemia cells.