Combined JAK/STAT5A and BCR-ABL Inhibition Impairs Blast Crisis Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Stem Cell Self-Renewal

Abstract 910 In blast crisis transformation of CML (BC CML), the leukemia stem cells (LSC), via the acquisition of both enhanced survival and self-renewal capacity, become increasingly resistant to BCR-ABL targeted tyrosine kinase inhibition and thus often contribute to relapse after treatment, pointing to the need for alternative therapeutic strategies and a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying disease progression. Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) plays an important role in BCR–ABL + cell survival and has profound effects on self-renewal and lineage commitment of normal and leukemic hematopoietic stem cells, through the activation of the transcription factor signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5). To determine if JAK/STAT signaling pathway activation is related to CML progression, LSC from human Chronic Phase (CP CML) and BC CML samples were sorted using FACS Aria (Lin-CD34+CD38+) and analyzed using splice-isoform specific q-RT-PCR. Our results showed that, compared to CP CML, BC LSC harbor enhanced mRNA expression of BCR-ABL, JAK2 and STAT5A isoforms, confirming that progression of CP to BC, in CML LSC, is marked by activation of JAK/STAT pathway. Therefore, we investigated the response of BC CML LSC to a clinical grade JAK2 inhibitor, SAR302503 (Sanofi, Cambridge, MA) alone or in combination with a potent BCR-ABL inhibitor, dasatinib, in vivo. After two weeks of treatment, RAG2−/−g c −/− mice intrahepatic transplanted with BC LSC, showed a significant (p To test whether the combination therapy can impair self-renewal capacity of the BC CML LSC in vivo , we immunomagnetic bead selected CD34 + cells from BM and spleens of treated mice, and serially transplanted an equal number into secondary recipients. We observed a significant (p Validation studies, using nanoproteomic analysis, confirmed that LSC sorted cells from mice treated with SAR302503 had lower expression levels of p-JAK2 (Tyr 1007-08) and p-STAT5A (Tyr 694) compared with vehicle treated mice (51% and 64% of reduction, respectively), while no changes are observed for total JAK2 protein or B2M between both conditions. Full transcriptome sequencing and q-RT-PCR analysis, on sorted CML LSC from mice treated with SAR302503 in combination with dasatinib, confirmed that STAT5A specific isoforms decresed after treatment, suggesting JAK/STAT pathway could be used as biomarker of response and could explain the impairment of self-renewal in the combination therapy. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.