FANCA deficiency promotes leukaemic progression by allowing the emergence of cells carrying oncogenic driver mutations

Leukaemia is caused by the clonal evolution of a cell that accumulates mutations/genomic rearrangements, allowing unrestrained cell growth. However, recent identification of leukaemic mutations in the blood cells of healthy individuals revealed that additional events are required to expand the mutated clones for overt leukaemia. Here, we assessed the functional consequences of deleting the Fanconi anaemia A (Fanca) gene, which encodes a DNA damage response protein, in Spi1 transgenic mice that develop preleukaemic syndrome. FANCA loss increases SPI1-associated disease penetrance and leukaemic progression without increasing the global mutation load of leukaemic clones. However, a high frequency of leukaemic FANCA-depleted cells display heterozygous activating mutations in known oncogenes, such as Kit or Nras, also identified but at low frequency in FANCA-WT mice with preleukaemic syndrome, indicating that FANCA counteracts the emergence of oncogene mutated leukaemic cells. A unique transcriptional signature is associated with the leukaemic status of FANCA-depleted cells, leading to activation of MDM4, NOTCH and Wnt/β-catenin pathways. We show that NOTCH signalling improves the proliferation capacity of FANCA-deficient leukaemic cells. Collectively, our observations indicate that loss of the FANC pathway, known to control genetic instability, fosters the expansion of leukaemic cells carrying oncogenic mutations rather than mutation formation. FANCA loss may contribute to this leukaemogenic progression by reprogramming transcriptomic landscape of the cells.

Fanca deficiency is associated with alterations in osteoclastogenesis that are rescued by TNFα

BACKGROUND

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) reside in the bone marrow (BM) niche, which includes bone-forming and bone-resorbing cells, i.e., osteoblasts (OBs) and osteoclasts (OCs). OBs originate from mesenchymal progenitors, while OCs are derived from HSCs. Self-renewal, proliferation and differentiation of HSCs are under the control of regulatory signals generated by OBs and OCs within the BM niche. Consequently, OBs and OCs control both bone physiology and hematopoiesis. Since the human developmental and bone marrow failure genetic syndrome fanconi anemia (FA) presents with skeletal abnormalities, osteoporosis and HSC impairment, we wanted to test the hypothesis that the main pathological abnormalities of FA could be related to a defect in OC physiology and/or in bone homeostasis.

RESULTS

We revealed here that the intrinsic differentiation of OCs from a Fanca^-/- mouse is impaired in vitro due to overactivation of the p53-p21 axis and defects in NF-kB signaling. The OC differentiation abnormalities observed in vitro were rescued by treating Fanca^-/- cells with the p53 inhibitor pifithrin-α, by treatment with the proinflammatory cytokine TNFα or by coculturing them with Fanca-proficient or Fanca-deficient osteoblastic cells.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, our results highlight an unappreciated role of Fanca in OC differentiation that is potentially circumvented in vivo by the presence of OBs and TNFα in the BM niche.

The underestimated role of the microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MiTF) in normal and pathological haematopoiesis

Haematopoiesis, the process by which a restrained population of stem cells terminally differentiates into specific types of blood cells, depends on the tightly regulated temporospatial activity of several transcription factors (TFs). The deregulation of their activity or expression is a main cause of pathological haematopoiesis, leading to bone marrow failure (BMF), anaemia and leukaemia. TFs can be induced and/or activated by different stimuli, to which they respond by regulating the expression of genes and gene networks. Most TFs are highly pleiotropic; i.e., they are capable of influencing two or more apparently unrelated phenotypic traits, and the action of a single TF in a specific setting often depends on its interaction with other TFs and signalling pathway components. The microphthalmia-associated TF (MiTF) is a prototype TF in multiple situations. MiTF has been described extensively as a key regulator of melanocyte and melanoma development because it acts mainly as an oncogene. Mitf-mutated mice show a plethora of pleiotropic phenotypes, such as microphthalmia, deafness, abnormal pigmentation, retinal degeneration, reduced mast cell numbers and osteopetrosis, revealing a greater requirement for MiTF activity in cells and tissue. A growing amount of evidence has led to the delineation of key roles for MiTF in haematopoiesis and/or in cells of haematopoietic origin, including haematopoietic stem cells, mast cells, NK cells, basophiles, B cells and osteoclasts. This review summarizes several roles of MiTF in cells of the haematopoietic system and how MiTFs can impact BM development.

Microphthalmia transcription factor expression contributes to bone marrow failure in Fanconi anemia

Hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) attrition is considered the key event underlying progressive BM failure (BMF) in Fanconi anemia (FA), the most frequent inherited BMF disorder in humans. However, despite major advances, how the cellular, biochemical, and molecular alterations reported in FA lead to HSC exhaustion remains poorly understood. Here, we demonstrated in human and mouse cells that loss-of-function of FANCA or FANCC, products of 2 genes affecting more than 80% of FA patients worldwide, is associated with constitutive expression of the transcription factor microphthalmia (MiTF) through the cooperative, unscheduled activation of several stress-signaling pathways, including the SMAD2/3, p38 MAPK, NF-κB, and AKT cascades. We validated the unrestrained Mitf expression downstream of p38 in Fanca-/- mice, which display hallmarks of hematopoietic stress, including loss of HSC quiescence, DNA damage accumulation in HSCs, and reduced HSC repopulation capacity. Importantly, we demonstrated that shRNA-mediated downregulation of Mitf expression or inhibition of p38 signaling rescued HSC quiescence and prevented DNA damage accumulation. Our data support the hypothesis that HSC attrition in FA is the consequence of defects in the DNA-damage response combined with chronic activation of otherwise transiently activated signaling pathways, which jointly prevent the recovery of HSC quiescence.