Activating a Non-Genetic MYC-Regulating Pathway Sensitizes Acute Myeloid Leukemia to Bromodomain Inhibition

MYC (c-Myc) plays a central role in the oncogenic progression and is commonly overexpressed or amplified in more than 50% of human cancers, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), which is an aggressive disease with over 70% of patients who cannot survive more than five years. Elevated MYC expression is associated with therapeutic resistance and predicts a poorer outcome in AML patients. While numerous lines of evidence have validated MYC as a therapeutic target of AML and many other cancer types, MYC protein itself has been a challenge for therapeutic targeting. Recently, MYC gene transcription has been linked to the bromodomain and extra-terminal domain (BET) family proteins. BET inhibitors (BETi) inhibit MYC expression and have shown promising antitumor activities in preclinical models and are being evaluated in clinical trials. Despite the therapeutic promise, BETi-associated drug resistance and dose-limiting side effects hinder the clinical applications. Therefore, there is a pressing need to understand the mechanisms controlling drug response and resistance to BET inhibitors.

To understand the mechanisms that regulate BETi sensitivity, we leveraged a functional CRISPR screen focusing on about 1,700 human transcription factors. We discovered the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) as a novel regulator of BETi sensitivity in AML. Our results have further identified that a novel AHR-ELMSAN1 axis is critically involved in regulating MYC and BETi sensitivity. Specifically, we show that constitutive or ligand activation of AHR sensitizes leukemia cells to BETi. AHR signaling represses MYC and synergizes with BETi for maximum inhibition of MYC transcription. Ectopic expression of MYC could rescue the anti-leukemia effects induced by combined AHR activation and BET blockade. Mechanistically, our unbiased bioinformatic analysis unexpectedly identified that AHR functions through activating a non-canonical target, ELMSAN1, a less-studied epigenetic factor known as a member of the MiDAC histone deacetylase complex. Depletion of ELMSAN1 leads to upregulation of MYC and blunts AHR signaling-mediated MYC repression and BETi sensitization. Importantly, we demonstrate that AHR agonist and BETi synergistically inhibit MYC and leukemia cell growth in CD34+ primary AML patient samples in vitro and patient-derived xenografts in vivo.

In summary, our data suggest that AHR-ELMSAN1 is a novel pathway for MYC repression, activation of which could sensitize AML to BET-targeting agents. As neither AHR nor ELMSAN1 is found mutated in AML, our research may open a new door to new MYC targeting paradigms by activating novel non-genetic MYC repressors.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.