Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Oct 11;7(4):602-618.
doi: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2016.08.013. Epub 2016 Sep 22.

Development Refractoriness of MLL-Rearranged Human B Cell Acute Leukemias to Reprogramming into Pluripotency

Alvaro Muñoz-López  1 , Damià Romero-Moya  1 , Cristina Prieto  1 , Verónica Ramos-Mejía  2 , Antonio Agraz-Doblas  3 , Ignacio Varela  4 , Marcus Buschbeck  5 , Anna Palau  5 , Xonia Carvajal-Vergara  6 , Alessandra Giorgetti  5 , Anthony Ford  7 , Majlinda Lako  8 , Isabel Granada  9 , Neus Ruiz-Xivillé  9 , Sandra Rodríguez-Perales  10 , Raul Torres-Ruíz  11 , Ronald W Stam  12 , Jose Luis Fuster  13 , Mario F Fraga  14 , Mahito Nakanishi  15 , Gianni Cazzaniga  16 , Michela Bardini  16 , Isabel Cobo  17 , Gustavo F Bayon  14 , Agustin F Fernandez  14 , Clara Bueno  18 , Pablo Menendez  19
Affiliations

Development Refractoriness of MLL-Rearranged Human B Cell Acute Leukemias to Reprogramming into Pluripotency

Alvaro Muñoz-López et al. Stem Cell Reports. .

Abstract

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are a powerful tool for disease modeling. They are routinely generated from healthy donors and patients from multiple cell types at different developmental stages. However, reprogramming leukemias is an extremely inefficient process. Few studies generated iPSCs from primary chronic myeloid leukemias, but iPSC generation from acute myeloid or lymphoid leukemias (ALL) has not been achieved. We attempted to generate iPSCs from different subtypes of B-ALL to address the developmental impact of leukemic fusion genes. OKSM(L)-expressing mono/polycistronic-, retroviral/lentiviral/episomal-, and Sendai virus vector-based reprogramming strategies failed to render iPSCs in vitro and in vivo. Addition of transcriptomic-epigenetic reprogramming "boosters" also failed to generate iPSCs from B cell blasts and B-ALL lines, and when iPSCs emerged they lacked leukemic fusion genes, demonstrating non-leukemic myeloid origin. Conversely, MLL-AF4-overexpressing hematopoietic stem cells/B progenitors were successfully reprogrammed, indicating that B cell origin and leukemic fusion gene were not reprogramming barriers. Global transcriptome/DNA methylome profiling suggested a developmental/differentiation refractoriness of MLL-rearranged B-ALL to reprogramming into pluripotency.

Keywords: B-ALL; DNA methylome; MLL-AF4; Sendai virus; cancer reprogramming; iPSC; transcriptome.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1
Figure 1
Reprogramming Highly Purified B Cell Leukemic Blasts Results in Generation of iPSCs from Contaminating Normal Myeloid Cells (A) Representative flow cytometry of high purity (>99%) FACS-sorted B cell leukemia blasts. (B) Representative FISH showing that leukemia blasts homogeneously harbor the leukemia-specific chromosomal rearrangements 11q23 (MLL) or ETV6-RUNX1 (white arrows). Scale bars, 5 μm. (C) Scheme of the polycistronic SeV-OKSM-mir302 vector used for reprogramming. (D) Scheme of the strategy used to reprogram leukemia blasts. (E) Resulting iPSC colonies do not harbor either MLL or ETV6-RUNX1 rearrangements. Scale bars, 5 μm. (F) Genomic PCR confirming the absence of both MLL and ETV6-RUNX1 in resulting iPSC colonies. (G) Representative experiment (n = 1) showing that factors such as sodium salicylate (NaS), decitabine, and iDot1L enhance the reprogramming of contaminating cells lacking either MLL or ETV6-RUNX1 rearrangements (n = 3).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Reprogramming of Xenograft-Expanded Proliferating Highly Purified MLL-AF4+ Leukemic Blasts Results in Generation of iPSCs from Contaminating Mouse Cells (A) Schematic depicting the in vivo strategies used to reprogram proliferating xenograft-expanded MLLr leukemic blasts. MLL-AF4+ blasts were either first OKSM-infected and then xenografted for proliferation (“expand infected blasts”) or xenografted first for proliferation (and treated in vivo with decitabine or iDot1L), then OKSM infected ex vivo (“infect expanded blasts”). (B) Summary of the outcome of reprogramming in vivo xenografted MLL-AF4+ blasts (n = 2 independent experiments).
Figure 3
Figure 3
MLL-AF4 Expression Does Not Constitute a Reprogramming Barrier on Its Own (A) Representative TRA-1-60 staining of iPSC colonies generated from CB-CD34+ HSPCs ectopically expressing GFP alone (empty vector; EV) or MLL-AF4 (n = 3 independent experiments). No iPSC colonies were obtained from SEM, THP1, or REH cell lines (n = 3 independent experiments). (B) Phase-contrast and fluorescence images of iPSC colonies generated from EV- and MLL-AF4-expressing CB-CD34+ cells. Scale bar, 100 μm. (C) Genomic PCR revealing that ∼85% of the iPSCs harbor MLL-AF4 provirus. (D) RT-PCR revealing that all iPSC clones carrying MLL-AF4 provirus express MLL-AF4 transcript. (E) Representative qRT-PCR demonstrating SeV elimination after ten passages. (F) Representative diploid karyotype of iPSCs (p15) derived from MLL-AF4-expressing CD34+ cells. (G) Representative morphology and alkaline phosphatase staining of iPSCs derived from MLL-AF4-expressing CD34+ cells. (H) qRT-PCR for the pluripotency transcription factors OCT4, SOX2, NANOG, REX1, CRIPTO, and DNMT3β in MLL-AF4+ iPSCs. (I) Representative flow cytometry expression of the pluripotency-associated surface markers TRA-1-60, SSEA-3, and SSEA-4 by MLL-AF4+ iPSCs.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Gene Expression Profiling Comparing MLL-AF4+ B Cell Blasts with HSCs, Myeloid HPCs, and B Cell HPCs (A) Heatmap depicting the genes differentially expressed (2-fold up- or downregulated; p < 0.01) in MLL-AF4+ B cell blasts versus normal HSCs and HPCs. The left color bar categorizes the gene expression level in a log2 scale. (B) Venn diagrams showing the number of transcripts differentially expressed between MLL-AF4+ blasts and HSCs, B cell HPCs, and myeloid HPCs. (C) Identification of the 87 genes shared by normal HSC, B cell HPCs, and myeloid HPCs but differentially expressed in MLL-AF4+ blasts. Red and blue identify upregulated and downregulated genes, respectively. (D) Statistically significant GO biological functions identified using GOrilla software of the genes differentially expressed in MLL-AF4+ blasts versus normal HSCs/HPCs ranked p value. −log p value, black bars (left y axis); enrichment score, filled red circle with red line (right y axis).
Figure 5
Figure 5
DNA Methylation Differences Observed in MLL-AF4+ B Cell Blasts Versus CD34+ Cells Expressing MLL-AF4 and CD34+CD19+ B Cell HPCs (A) Global DNA methylation analysis by pyrosequencing of LINE-1 elements in MLL-AF4+ blasts and normal CD34+CD19+ B cell HPCs (n = 3 independent experiments). Error bars indicate SD. (B) Unsupervised hierarchical clustering and heatmap showing the CpG sites with differential DNA methylation between MLL-AF4+ blasts versus normal CD34+CD19+ B cell HPCs and CD34+ cells expressing ectopic MLL-AF4. Average methylation values are displayed from 0 (blue) to 1 (yellow). (C) Venn diagrams showing the number of CpG sites differentially hypomethylated (left) or hypermethylated (right) in MLL-AF4+ blasts versus normal CD34+CD19+ B cell HPCs and CD34+ ectopically expressing MLL-AF4. (D) Selection of GO terms from the top 50 statistically significant biological functions, ranked by p value (x axis), of genes differentially hypomethylated (left) or hypermethylated (right) in MLL-AF4+ blasts versus normal CD34+CD19+ B cell HPCs and CD34+ ectopically expressing MLL-AF4. The y axis indicates the relative risk (±95% confidence intervals) as a measure of effect size. The relative risk is the ratio of the proportion of genes belonging to a given GO term in a selected subset of genes to the same proportion in the remaining, background genes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Barrett R., Ornelas L., Yeager N., Mandefro B., Sahabian A., Lenaeus L., Targan S.R., Svendsen C.N., Sareen D. Reliable generation of induced pluripotent stem cells from human lymphoblastoid cell lines. Stem Cells Transl. Med. 2014;3:1429–1434. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bedel A., Pasquet J.M., Lippert E., Taillepierre M., Lagarde V., Dabernat S., Dubus P., Charaf L., Beliveau F., de Verneuil H. Variable behavior of iPSCs derived from CML patients for response to TKI and hematopoietic differentiation. PLoS One. 2013;8:e71596. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bershteyn M., Hayashi Y., Desachy G., Hsiao E.C., Sami S., Tsang K.M., Weiss L.A., Kriegstein A.R., Yamanaka S., Wynshaw-Boris A. Cell-autonomous correction of ring chromosomes in human induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature. 2014;507:99–103. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bibikova M., Barnes B., Tsan C., Ho V., Klotzle B., Le J.M., Delano D., Zhang L., Schroth G.P., Gunderson K.L. High density DNA methylation array with single CpG site resolution. Genomics. 2011;98:288–295. - PubMed
    1. Bollati V., Baccarelli A., Hou L., Bonzini M., Fustinoni S., Cavallo D., Byun H.M., Jiang J., Marinelli B., Pesatori A.C. Changes in DNA methylation patterns in subjects exposed to low-dose benzene. Cancer Res. 2007;67:876–880. - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances