Publication Date:
2012-11-16
Description:
Abstract 1662 Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) stem cells are biologically insensitive to ABL tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) monotherapy and are genetically unstable and rapidly generate imatinib (IM)-resistant mutants in vivo and in vitro. Therefore, there is clearly a need to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to identify biomarkers to predict patients' response to TKI therapy, and to develop potential therapeutics to target CML stem cells to prevent acquisition of resistance. It has been reported that the induction of macroautophagy (autophagy) may play a critical role in the persistence of primitive CML cells, but how this process is regulated is largely unknown. To investigate whether CML stem/progenitor cells harbor a unique autophagy gene expression profile that could be predictive of patient response to TKI therapy, we have now examined transcript levels of several key autophagy and autophagy-related genes (ATG4A, ATG4B, ATG4C, ATG4D, ATG5, ATG7, ATG12, BECLIN-1, and LC3B) in CD34+ subpopulations obtained at diagnosis from chronic phase (CP) CML patients who were retrospectively classified, after initiation of IM therapy, as IM-responders (n=14) and IM-nonresponders (n=14), as well as normal healthy donors (n=8). Q-RT-PCR analysis revealed that CD34+ CML cells display significantly higher expression levels of ATG4A, ATG4B, ATG4C, and BECLIN-1(p
Print ISSN:
0006-4971
Electronic ISSN:
1528-0020
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine
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