Description
Decitabine (DAC) is clinically used to treat myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Genome-wide CRISPR-dCas9 activation screen using MDS-derived AML cells indicates that mitotic regulation is critical for DAC resistance. DAC strongly induces abnormal mitosis (abscission failure or tripolar mitosis) in human myeloid tumors at clinical concentrations, especially in those with TP53 mutations or antecedent hematological disorders. This DAC-induced mitotic disruption and apoptosis are significantly attenuated in DNMT1-depleted cells. In contrast, overexpression of Dnmt1, but not the catalyt- ically inactive mutant, enhances DAC-induced mitotic defects in myeloid tumors. The authors also demonstrate that DAC-induced mitotic disruption is enhanced by pharmacological inhibition of the ATR-CLSPN-CHK1 pathway. These data challenge the current assumption that DAC inhibits leukemogenesis through DNMT1 inhibition and subsequent DNA hypomethylation and highlight the potent activity of DAC to disrupt mitosis through aberrant DNMT1-DNA covalent bonds.
Funding Information
This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (19H05651, D.K.; 20H00537, T.K.; 19H03685, 22H03100, S.G.), Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (21H00272, A.N.), Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory) (22K19540, S.G.), Fund for the Promotion of Joint Inter- national Research (Fostering Joint International Research [B]) (22KK0127, S.G.), Grant-in-Aid for Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) research fellow DC1 (19J21723, T.Y.), Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (JP21zf0127001, T.S.), JST Core Research for Evolutional Scienece and Technology (JPMJCR2123, T.S.; JPMJCR21E6, T. Fukaga- wa),The Uehara Memorial Foundation (T.C.), and The Kanae Foundation for the Promotion of Medical Science (D.K).