Abstract 525: Targeting interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase 1/4 in acute myeloid leukemia stem cells
Authors: Ho Tzu-Chieh , Singh Rakesh K. , Kawano Hiroki , LaMere Mark W. , Wang Jian , Vertino Paula M. , Dokholyan Nikolay V. , Calvi Laura M. , Jordan Craig T. , Becker Michael W. 
Published: June 2023

Therapies for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients are suboptimal due mainly to relapse of disease after treatment. Leukemia stem cell (LSC) populations maintain the disease and serve as a reservoir for relapse. Therefore, treatments that can eradicate LSCs will improve the outcomes of patients with AML. Our preliminary data have shown that the interleukin-1 (IL-1) pathway is upregulated following treatment and disease progression in AML and plays an important role in LSCs in vitro and in vivo. To target IL-1 signaling, we disclose the structure-activity relationship guided development of UR241-2, a novel small molecule compound of interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase 1/4 (IRAK1/4), which are critical downstream factors in IL-1/Toll-Like Receptor (TLR) signaling. UR241-2, at single dose (5 nM) screening exhibited high target selectivity; other than IRAK1/4 only 9 kinases in a panel of 682 kinases were inhibited by &gt;25% activity. The NanoBRET assay using HEK293 cells transfected with targeted kinase vectors showed notably selective target engagement of UR241-2 against IRAK4 (IC50 = 6.07 nM). By using the in vitro NF-kB reporter assay and immunoblotting analysis, we identified that UR241-2 robustly inhibits IL-1/TLR signaling in AML cells including the activation of NF-κB and the phosphorylation of P65 and P38, following IL-1 stimulation. Next, we treated murine MLL-AF9 AML cells and human MDSL cells with UR241-2 and two IRAK4 inhibitors (PF-06650833 and CA-4948) that are currently in clinical or preclinical studies. We found that UR241-2 significantly inhibits colony-forming ability in AML and myelodysplastic syndromes, with similar or better efficacy compared to PF-06650833 or CA-4948. We also determined that UR241-2 suppresses LSC clonogenicity in primary human AML cells at diagnosis and in relapse while minimally impacting normal hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell function. Last, we investigated the impacts of UR241-2 on LSC engrafted ability in vivo. We treated murine MLL-AF9 cells with UR241-2 and PF-06650833 ex vivo for three days and transplanted them into recipient mice. After four weeks, we observed that UR241-2 significantly suppresses the engraftment levels of AML cells in bone marrow. It also decreases the WBC in peripheral blood and increases the RBC, HGB and PLT counts compared to the vehicle control group. Taken together, our findings demonstrated that targeting IRAK1/4 using the novel compound UR241-2 is able to impair LSC clonogenicity and engraftment capability in AML following treatment and disease progression. This provides a potential therapeutic strategy to eradicate the LSC population and improve the outcome of AML patients.

Citation Format: Tzu-Chieh Ho, Rakesh K. Singh, Hiroki Kawano, Mark W. LaMere, Jian Wang, Paula M. Vertino, Nikolay V. Dokholyan, Laura M. Calvi, Craig T. Jordan, Michael W. Becker. Targeting interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase 1/4 in acute myeloid leukemia stem cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 525.