Telomere Length Shortening in the CML Leukemic Stem Cell Compartment Correlates with the Respective Clone Size: Evidence for Early Vs. Late Chronic Phase

Introduction: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a clonal stem cell disorder characterized by the bcr-abl translocation. Recent data provides evidence that CML chronic phase (CP) can be classified into early and late CP depending on the degree of expansion of the leukemic stem cell (LSC) clone. Patients in late CP have a higher LSC burden going along with an inferior response to TKI therapy. Telomeres shorten with each cell division and telomere length (TL) reflects the replicative history of a cell. We postulate that the LSC burden correlates with accelerated telomere shortening due to clonal replicative expansion of bcr-abl positive cells. Previous studies evaluating TL in peripheral blood cells of CML patients already revealed a correlation of age-adapted TL with disease stage, response to treatment and duration of CP. However, the high intra-individual, mostly genetic inter-individual variability in TL limits the predictive value of TL measurements when no patient specific bcr-abl negative cells were available for comparison. The aim of our study was to analyze TL in the LSC and non-clonal HSC compartment of patients with CP using a modified Q-FISH technique allowing the TL analysis in bcr-abl positive and negative cells.

Methods and Patients: 11 patients diagnosed with CML in CP of the NCT00852566 study (Nordic CML Group) were included into our retrospective analysis. Mean age of the patients was 58.9 years. Bone marrow samples from initial diagnosis were sorted for CD34+/CD38- cells reflecting the leukemic stem cell compartment. Samples were analyzed with the FISH method using dual fusion dual color BCR-ABL1 probe following standard procedures. After capturing the bcr-abl staining using confocal microscopy, samples were re-processed for TL analysis by Q-FISH using established protocols. Optimized microscopy techniques allowed for TL to be assessed in all previously captured cells allowing the identification of bcr-abl positive and negative cells within the same sample. Analysis and quantification of bcr-abl FISH staining and TL measurement by Q-FISH were performed in single-blinded fashion.

Results: Bcr-abl negative cells represent the non-clonal hematopoiesis and were used to correct TL. We observed significant shortened TL in the bcr-abl positive cells compared to bcr-abl negative cells (-2.18 ± 2.08 kilobases (kb), p=0.01) in line with previously published results. Next, we correlated the clone size (i.e. the proportion of bcr-abl positive cells) with the degree of telomere shortening in the leukemic stem cell compartment. Mean clone size of the patients was 67.4 ± 21.7 % S.D. Despite of the relatively small sample size studied, we found a significant negative correlation (R²=0.45, p=0.04) between TL and clone size strongly supporting the notion that increased expansion of the bcr-abl positive LSC pool leads to accelerated telomere shortening.

Conclusions: In this study, we provide evidence for accelerated telomere shortening in bcr-abl positive LSC as compared to their normal CD34+/CD38- counterpart in CP CML samples at diagnosis. Furthermore, the degree of TL shortening correlates with the clone size in the HSC compartment, i.e. a parameter that reflects duration of CP. Thus, this allows the discrimination of early vs. late CP and might as such be used as a prognostic (and potentially predictive) biomarker in CML.