The Potential Role of STAT's in Anti-Leukemic Therapy with Different Drugs

Abstract 5120

STAT pathways play a pivotal role in oncogenesis and leukemogenesis, thus targeting STAT signalling appears to be an effective anticancer treatment strategy. It has been described that constitutive activation of STAT3 and STAT5 plays a pro-oncogenic role both in acute and chronic myeloid neoplasms. In this study, we aimed to clarify the potential relationship between drug-induced apoptosis with different agents and STAT pathway. A third-generation bisphosphonate; zoledronate, an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACE-I); enalapril, a proteasome inhibitor which is used for treatment of multiple myeloma; bortezomib and a second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor; dasatinib were examined in this goal.

Cell viability and cytotoxicity tests were conducted by using Trypan blue dye exclusion and XTT assays, respectively. Apoptotic analyses were performed by AnnexinV-EGFP staining method and fluorescence microscopy. Expression levels of STAT3, −5A and −5B genes were analysed in myeloid cell lines by qRT-PCR.

The results showed that zoledronate; bortezomib and dasatinib decreased viability and proliferation and induced apoptosis in CML cell line K562 in a dose- and time-dependent manner which is associated by prominent decrease of STAT3, STAT5A and STAT5B mRNA expressions. Enalapril was also found to be cytotoxic and induced apoptosis in APL cell line HL60 in a dose- and time-dependent manner and the expression levels of STAT5A gene have significantly reduced in enalapril-treated HL60 cells as compared to untreated controls. Treatments of cell lines with other drugs were also associated with significant apoptosis in certain time points. The results and changes in expression of STAT's in mRNA level at 72^nd hours are summarized in table.

Taken together all these data showed that targeting STAT pathways by different drugs may be an appropriate approach in anti-leukemic therapy. This finding is important to propose that discovery or identification of novel agents targeted STATs may open new windows to the other hematological and solid malignancies which are associated with aberrant STAT expression.