Abstract 3018: Mechanisms of tyrosine kinase inhibitor resistance in chronic myeloid leukemia
Authors: Eiring Anna M. , Ellwood Rebecca , Fiol Carme Ripoll , Hills Robert K. , Nteliopoulos Georgios , Reid Alistair , Milojkovic Dragana , Apperley Jane , Sorouri-Khorashad Jamshid 
Published: August 2019

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting BCR-ABL1 have turned chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) from a fatal to a chronic disease. Despite improved survival, resistance is a clinical problem, and TKIs do not target the quiescent CML leukemic stem cell (LSC), meaning that patients must be treated for life at a high economic burden and sometimes with significant side effects. TKI resistance is frequently characterized by mutations in the BCR-ABL1 kinase domain, but they explain only ~50% of clinical TKI failure. The remaining patients have BCR-ABL1-independent resistance, defined as survival despite BCR-ABL1 inhibition. We have previously reported a gene expression signature predictive of TKI failure in CD34+ cells from chronic phase CML patients (McWeeney et al. 2010). This gene expression signature demonstrated significant overlap with signatures of blast phase CML (Zheng et al. 2006), suggesting that similar biological processes may be driving TKI resistance and disease progression. We expanded our analysis, and also found significant overlap between the expression profiles of TKI resistance and quiescent CML LSCs reported by Graham et al. (p=4x10-14) and Cramer Morales et al. (p=7x10-6). These data suggest that there is a core of genes whose expression is consistently associated with multiple scenarios of BCR-ABL1-independent resistance. Our previous work has shown that BCR-ABL1-independent resistance is largely driven by STAT3, and that targeting STAT3 in combination with TKIs restores sensitivity in TKI-resistant CML stem and progenitor cells (Eiring et al. Leukemia 2015). Unexpectedly, gene set enrichment analysis revealed that our gene expression signature predictive of TKI failure (McWeeney et al. 2010) does not reveal a STAT3 transcriptional signature. Similarly, RNA sequencing data on TKI-resistant K562-R cells, which are resistant to TKIs but lack BCR-ABL1 kinase domain mutations, revealed that, while TKI resistance was not associated with a STAT3 transcriptional signature (p=1.0), it was correlated with a signature reminiscent of TNFα signaling via NFκB (p=0.024). Nucleocytoplasmic fractionation revealed higher levels of total- and phospho-NFκB in the nucleus of K562-R versus K562-S cells, and in CD34+progenitors from TKI-resistant CML patients (n=3) compared to TKI responders (n=2) and normal individuals (n=2). These data indicate that NFκB may be driving the gene expression signature associated with BCR-ABL1-independent resistance, and suggest non-canonical functions for STAT3 that go beyond its traditional role as a transcription factor.

Citation Format: Anna M. Eiring, Rebecca Ellwood, Carme Ripoll Fiol, Robert K. Hills, Georgios Nteliopoulos, Alistair Reid, Dragana Milojkovic, Jane Apperley, Jamshid Sorouri-Khorashad. Mechanisms of tyrosine kinase inhibitor resistance in chronic myeloid leukemia [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3018.