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Chronic myeloproliferative neoplasms

Novel BET protein proteolysis-targeting chimera exerts superior lethal activity than bromodomain inhibitor (BETi) against post-myeloproliferative neoplasm secondary (s) AML cells

Leukemia volume 31, pages 1951–1961 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

The PROTAC (proteolysis-targeting chimera) ARV-825 recruits bromodomain and extraterminal (BET) proteins to the E3 ubiquitin ligase cereblon, leading to degradation of BET proteins, including BRD4. Although the BET-protein inhibitor (BETi) OTX015 caused accumulation of BRD4, treatment with equimolar concentrations of ARV-825 caused sustained and profound depletion (>90%) of BRD4 and induced significantly more apoptosis in cultured and patient-derived (PD) CD34+ post-MPN sAML cells, while relatively sparing the CD34+ normal hematopoietic progenitor cells. RNA-Seq, Reverse Phase Protein Array and mass cytometry ‘CyTOF’ analyses demonstrated that ARV-825 caused greater perturbations in messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein expressions than OTX015 in sAML cells. Specifically, compared with OTX015, ARV-825 treatment caused more robust and sustained depletion of c-Myc, CDK4/6, JAK2, p-STAT3/5, PIM1 and Bcl-xL, while increasing the levels of p21 and p27. Compared with OTX015, PROTAC ARV-771 treatment caused greater reduction in leukemia burden and further improved survival of NSG mice engrafted with luciferase-expressing HEL92.1.7 cells. Co-treatment with ARV-825 and JAK inhibitor ruxolitinib was synergistically lethal against established and PD CD34+ sAML cells. Notably, ARV-825 induced high levels of apoptosis in the in vitro generated ruxolitinib-persister or ruxolitinib-resistant sAML cells. These findings strongly support the in vivo testing of the BRD4-PROTAC based combinations against post-MPN sAML.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Flow Cytometry and Cellular Imaging (FCCI) Core Facility and the Functional Proteomics Reverse-Phase Protein Array (RPPA) Core facility, which are supported by MD Anderson Cancer Center Support Grant 5P30 CA016672-40. The heat maps were developed by the MD Anderson Cancer Center Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, In Silico Solutions, Santeon and SRA International. This work was supported in part by U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI; MD Anderson TCGA Genome Data Analysis Center) grant numbers CA143883 and CA083639, the Mary K. Chapman Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (honoring Lorraine Dell), and MD Anderson Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA016672 (the Bioinformatics Shared Resource). Additional support was also provided by CPRIT Metabolomics Core Facility Support Award RP120092 (CC) and a pilot grant from the Alkek Center for Molecular Discovery (CC). CMC acknowledges support from the National Institutes of Health (grant number R35CA197589). This research is supported in part by the MD Anderson Cancer Center Leukemia SPORE (P50 CA100632).

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Author notes

  1. D T Saenz and W Fiskus: These two authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Leukemia, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

    D T Saenz, W Fiskus, T Manshouri, C P Mill, B Sun, T M Kadia, N Pemmaraju, C DiNardo, M-S Kim, A J Nowak, S Verstovsek & K N Bhalla

  2. Arvinas LLC, New Haven, CT, USA

    Y Qian, K Raina, K G Coleman, A P Crew & A Shen

  3. Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

    K Rajapakshe & C Coarfa

  4. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech and Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    P Qiu

  5. Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    C M Crews

  6. Department of Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    C M Crews

  7. Department of Pharmacology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    C M Crews

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Correspondence to K N Bhalla.

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Competing interests

CMC is the founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of, and possesses an equity ownership stake in, Arvinas, LLC. YQ, KR, KGC, APC and AS are Arvinas employees and possess an equity ownership stake in Arvinas. NP serves on the scientific advisory board of Incyte Pharmaceuticals. He has also served as a consultant and received research funding from Novartis Pharmaceuticals. The remaining authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Saenz, D., Fiskus, W., Qian, Y. et al. Novel BET protein proteolysis-targeting chimera exerts superior lethal activity than bromodomain inhibitor (BETi) against post-myeloproliferative neoplasm secondary (s) AML cells. Leukemia 31, 1951–1961 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/leu.2016.393

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