Abstract 5845: Cytarabine resistance leads to a unique mutational signature
Authors: Cao Dengchao , Yin Mianmian , Zhang Zhenhua , Baslan Taimour , Zhu Jack , Bertoli Ryan , Meltzer Paul , Aplan Peter 
Published: March 2024

The prognosis of recurrent T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is poor, mainly due to chemotherapy resistance. The mechanism(s) leading to chemoresistance at relapse are incompletely understood. We previously characterized a mouse strain that is hypomorphic for the DNA replication factor Mcm2. Mcm2hypo mice develop T-ALL due to acquired DNA copy number variations (CNV) involving tumor suppressor or oncogenes. We hypothesize that treatment of Mcm2hypo cells with specific chemotherapy agents may reveal CNV that lead to chemoresistance. We treated two Mcm2hypo T-ALL cell lines (designated 2883 and 2869) and an Mcm2 WT T-ALL cell line (designated 7298) with cytarabine (ARAC), an active agent often incorporated in T-ALL treatment regimens. After one year of treatment with gradually increasing ARAC concentrations, we obtained ARAC resistant cell lines (designated with the suffix CR) that tolerate drug concentrations up to 10,000X that of parental cell lines. These samples were characterized by sparse WGS (for CNV assessment), RNA-Seq and WES. Both the 2883CR and 2869CR cell lines had bi-allelic mutations involving Dck, which is the rate-limiting enzyme in the cytidine salvage pathway, and is thought to be required for metabolism of ARAC. In both cases, one allele was deleted while the second allele had a splice site/region mutation leading to partial intron retention and resultant frameshift. The 7298CR cell line had homozygous deletion of Dck. Western blotting showed absence of WT Dck protein in all three cell lines. Further analysis of WES data revealed thousands of acquired single nucleotide variants (SNV) in both Dck mutant Mcm2hypo cell lines. These mutations occurred in a specific trinucleotide context (C&gt;T in a GCG context, T&gt;C in a GTC context, T&gt;G mutations in GTC and GTT context, and C&gt;G in a GCC context) generating a mutational signature that is not present in the COSMIC database. In addition, the parental 2883 and 2869 cell lines showed fewer mutations (ie, hundreds vs thousands) in a similar context (C&gt;T in a GCG context, T&gt;C in a GTC context, T&gt;G mutations in GTC and GTT context, but not the C&gt;G in GCC context). A GEMINI (Genotoxic Mutational Signature Identified After Clonal Expansion In Vitro) assay of untreated 2883CR and 2869CR cells demonstrated that ongoing ARAC exposure was not required for the mutational signature. We hypothesize that the basic signature (C&gt;T in a GCG context, T&gt;C in a GTC context, T&gt;G mutations in GTC and GTT context) can be produced by Mcm2 deficiency, and this signature is amplified and modified (to include a C&gt;G in GCC context) by Dck inactivation. In summary, we identified three mechanisms responsible for Dck inactivation associated with ARAC resistance: copy number loss, splice site mutations, and splice region mutations. Moreover, Dck inactivation leads to a specific mutation signature. These findings add to emerging data that exposure to specific chemotherapy agents can lead to specific mutational signatures.

Citation Format: Dengchao Cao, Mianmian Yin, Zhenhua Zhang, Taimour Baslan, Jack Zhu, Ryan Bertoli, Paul Meltzer, Peter Aplan. Cytarabine resistance leads to a unique mutational signature [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 5845.