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Feng S, Yuan Y, Lin Z, Li M, Ye D, Shi L, Li D, Zhao M, Meng C, He X, Wu S, Xiong F, Ye S, Yang J, Zhuang H, Hong L, Gao S. Low-dose hypomethylating agents cooperate with ferroptosis inducers to enhance ferroptosis by regulating the DNA methylation-mediated MAGEA6-AMPK-SLC7A11-GPX4 signaling pathway in acute myeloid leukemia. Exp Hematol Oncol 2024; 13:19. [PMID: 38378601 PMCID: PMC10877917 DOI: 10.1186/s40164-024-00489-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/14/2023] [Accepted: 02/12/2024] [Indexed: 02/22/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Ferroptosis is a new form of nonapoptotic and iron-dependent type of cell death. Glutathione peroxidase-4 (GPX4) plays an essential role in anti-ferroptosis by reducing lipid peroxidation. Although acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells, especially relapsed and refractory (R/R)-AML, present high GPX4 levels and enzyme activities, pharmacological inhibition of GPX4 alone has limited application in AML. Thus, whether inhibition of GPX4 combined with other therapeutic reagents has effective application in AML is largely unknown. METHODS Lipid reactive oxygen species (ROS), malondialdehyde (MDA), and glutathione (GSH) assays were used to assess ferroptosis in AML cells treated with the hypomethylating agent (HMA) decitabine (DAC), ferroptosis-inducer (FIN) RAS-selective lethal 3 (RSL3), or their combination. Combination index (CI) analysis was used to assess the synergistic activity of DAC + RSL3 against AML cells. Finally, we evaluated the synergistic activity of DAC + RSL3 in murine AML and a human R/R-AML-xenografted NSG model in vivo. RESULTS We first assessed GPX4 expression and found that GPX4 levels were higher in AML cells, especially those with MLL rearrangements, than in NCs. Knockdown of GPX4 by shRNA and indirect inhibition of GPX4 enzyme activity by RSL3 robustly induced ferroptosis in AML cells. To reduce the dose of RSL3 and avoid side effects, low doses of DAC (0.5 µM) and RSL3 (0.05 µM) synergistically facilitate ferroptosis by inhibiting the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)-SLC7A11-GPX4 axis. Knockdown of AMPK by shRNA enhanced ferroptosis, and overexpression of SLC7A11 and GPX4 rescued DAC + RSL3-induced anti-leukemogenesis. Mechanistically, DAC increased the expression of MAGEA6 by reducing MAGEA6 promoter hypermethylation. Overexpression of MAGEA6 induced the degradation of AMPK, suggesting that DAC inhibits the AMPK-SLC7A11-GPX4 axis by increasing MAGEA6 expression. In addition, DAC + RSL3 synergistically reduced leukemic burden and extended overall survival compared with either DAC or RSL3 treatment in the MLL-AF9-transformed murine model. Finally, DAC + RSL3 synergistically reduced viability in untreated and R/R-AML cells and extended overall survival in two R/R-AML-xenografted NSG mouse models. CONCLUSIONS Our study first identify vulnerability to ferroptosis by regulating MAGEA6-AMPK-SLC7A11-GPX4 signaling pathway. Combined treatment with HMAs and FINs provides a potential therapeutic choice for AML patients, especially for R/R-AML.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shuya Feng
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Yigang Yuan
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Zihan Lin
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Min Li
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Daijiao Ye
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Liuzhi Shi
- Department of Clinical Laboratory, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Danyang Li
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Min Zhao
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Chen Meng
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Xiaofei He
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Shanshan Wu
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Fang Xiong
- The Children's Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, 3333 Binsheng Road, Hangzhou, 310051, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Siyu Ye
- School of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, 818 Fenghua Road, Jiangbei District, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Junjun Yang
- Department of Laboratory Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Yuying Children's Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 109 Xuanyuanxi Road, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Haifeng Zhuang
- Department of Clinical Hematology and Transfusion, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 54 Post Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
| | - Lili Hong
- Department of Clinical Hematology and Transfusion, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 54 Post Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.
| | - Shenmeng Gao
- Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 1 Xuefubei Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang Province, China.
- The Key Laboratory of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Diseases of Wenzhou, the Second Affiliated Hospital, Yuying Children's Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, 109 Xuanyuanxi Road, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.
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Hackl H, Astanina K, Wieser R. Molecular and genetic alterations associated with therapy resistance and relapse of acute myeloid leukemia. J Hematol Oncol 2017; 10:51. [PMID: 28219393 PMCID: PMC5322789 DOI: 10.1186/s13045-017-0416-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 68] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2016] [Accepted: 02/04/2017] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
Background The majority of individuals with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) respond to initial chemotherapy and achieve a complete remission, yet only a minority experience long-term survival because a large proportion of patients eventually relapse with therapy-resistant disease. Relapse therefore represents a central problem in the treatment of AML. Despite this, and in contrast to the extensive knowledge about the molecular events underlying the process of leukemogenesis, information about the mechanisms leading to therapy resistance and relapse is still limited. Purpose and content of review Recently, a number of studies have aimed to fill this gap and provided valuable information about the clonal composition and evolution of leukemic cell populations during the course of disease, and about genetic, epigenetic, and gene expression changes associated with relapse. In this review, these studies are summarized and discussed, and the data reported in them are compiled in order to provide a resource for the identification of molecular aberrations recurrently acquired at, and thus potentially contributing to, disease recurrence and the associated therapy resistance. This survey indeed uncovered genetic aberrations with known associations with therapy resistance that were newly gained at relapse in a subset of patients. Furthermore, the expression of a number of protein coding and microRNA genes was reported to change between diagnosis and relapse in a statistically significant manner. Conclusions Together, these findings foster the expectation that future studies on larger and more homogeneous patient cohorts will uncover pathways that are robustly associated with relapse, thus representing potential targets for rationally designed therapies that may improve the treatment of patients with relapsed AML, or even facilitate the prevention of relapse in the first place. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13045-017-0416-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hubert Hackl
- Division of Bioinformatics, Biocenter, Medical University of Innsbruck, Innrain 80, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Ksenia Astanina
- Department of Medicine I and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Medical University of Vienna, Währinger Gürtel 18-20, 1090, Wien, Austria
| | - Rotraud Wieser
- Department of Medicine I and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Medical University of Vienna, Währinger Gürtel 18-20, 1090, Wien, Austria.
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Liu J, Morgan M, Hutchison K, Calhoun VD. A study of the influence of sex on genome wide methylation. PLoS One 2010; 5:e10028. [PMID: 20386599 PMCID: PMC2850313 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010028] [Citation(s) in RCA: 185] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/13/2009] [Accepted: 03/12/2010] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Sex differences in methylation status have been observed in specific gene-disease studies and healthy methylation variation studies, but little work has been done to study the impact of sex on methylation at the genome wide locus-to-locus level or to determine methods for accounting for sex in genomic association studies. In this study we investigate the genomic sex effect on saliva DNA methylation of 197 subjects (54 females) using 20,493 CpG sites. Three methods, two-sample T-test, principle component analysis and independent component analysis, all successfully identify sex influences. The results show that sex not only influences the methylation of genes in the X chromosome but also in autosomes. 580 autosomal sites show strong differences between males and females. They are found to be highly involved in eight functional groups, including DNA transcription, RNA splicing, membrane, etc. Equally important is that we identify some methylation sites associated with not only sex, but also other phenotypes (age, smoking and drinking level, and cancer). Verification was done through an independent blood cell DNA methylation data (1298 CpG sites from a cancer panel array). The same genomic site-specific influence pattern and potential confounding effects with cancer were observed. The overlapping rate of identified sex affected genes between saliva and blood cell is 81% for X chromosome, and 8% for autosomes. Therefore, correction for sex is necessary. We propose a simple correction method based on independent component analysis, which is a data driven method and accommodates sample differences. Comparison before and after the correction suggests that the method is able to effectively remove the potentially confounding effects of sex, and leave other phenotypes untouched. As such, our method is able to disentangle the sex influence on a genome wide level, and paves the way to achieve more accurate association analyses in genome wide methylation studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jingyu Liu
- The Mind Research Network, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America.
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Chim CS, Kwong YL. Adverse prognostic impact ofCDKN2Bhyper-methylationin acute promyelocytic leukemia. Leuk Lymphoma 2009; 47:815-25. [PMID: 16753865 DOI: 10.1080/10428190500513827] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
The use of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) has markedly improved the survival of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), making it potentially curable. However, the identification of prognostic markers predictive of durable remission remains an important aspect in risk-adjusted treatment algorithms. High presentation leucocyte count has been found to correlate with inferior disease-free-survival (DFS). However, recent studies have also shown aberrant promoter methylation of the CDKN2B (alias p15) gene to be a negative prognostic factor. Promoter methylation results in the formation of a repressor complex, leading to chromatin compaction and suppression of gene expression and is, therefore, an alternative mechanism of gene inactivation. CDKN2B, a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, is a tumor suppressor gene inhibiting cell cycle progression. The CpG island inside the CDKN2B promoter is hyper-methylated in approximately 50 - 60% of APL patients. CDKN2B methylation correlates negatively with DFS. As methylation-induced inactivation of CDKN2B pre-disposes to unchecked cellular proliferation, CDKN2B hyper-methylation is also associated with high presentation leucocyte count. Multivariate analysis in several studies, however, has shown that the negative prognostic impact of CDKN2B methylation is independent of its association with high leucocyte counts. Therefore, CDKN2B methylation is a potential prognostic factor that may be incorporated into a risk-stratified therapeutic strategy, which aims at achieving a cure with optimal amounts of treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chor-Sang Chim
- Department of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, PR China
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