Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia Cells Resistant to Retinoic Acid Show Further Perturbation of the RARα Signal Transduction System

Abstract

Acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL) cell lines resistant to all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) have been previously derived from the NB4 cell line, and characterized as having lost the expression of the intact pm1/RARα fusion protein. To confirm the association between ATRA-resistance and alteration in the fusion protein at the clonal level, 16 clones were generated from ATRA-resistant APL cell lines. All clones show immunological (HLA class I and II, CD11b and c, CD13 and 33), molecular and growth features similar to the parental cell lines.

To investigate whether the irradiation protocol used to generate the previously reported retinoic acid-resistant NB4.306 cell line induced additional alterations that could render these cells able to escape the anti-proliferative effect of retinoic acid (ATRA), an additional ATRA-resistant APL cell line, [NB4.007/6], was generated, under the selective pressure of ATRA, from the NB4 cell line without previous radiation. This cell line shows resistance to the antiproliferative and differentiating action of ATRA. The NB4.007/6 cell line contains the t(15;17) chromosome translocation, shows the usual pm1/RARα hybrid DNA but expresses no detectable amount of the usual pm1/RARα protein in Western blot analysis, similarly to the NB4.306 cell line.

Finally, the relative resistance to ATRA of NB4.306 and NB4.007/6 was evaluated by comparing the phenotypic (CD11b) changes induced by ATRA in these two lines with those induced in the parental, ATRA-sensitive, NB4 cell line. It is estimated that NB4.306 and NB4.007/6 are about 300 and 70 times less sensitive to ATRA than the original NB4 cell line.

Key Words:

• Acute promyelocytic leukaemia pm1/RARα retinoic acid NB4 resistance