Early Different Downstream Target of Glucocorticoid Receptor Contributing to Glucocorticoids Sensitivity in Kasumi-1 Cells

The t(8;21) chromosome translocation frequently occurs in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), resulting in an in-frame fusion between the DNA-binding domain of AML1 and almost the entire of ETO gene. The fusion AML1-ETO protein is thought to play a critical role in the abnormal proliferation and differentiation of myeloid leukemia cells, such as Kasumi-1 and SKNO-1 cells. Glucocorticoids (GC) can induce apoptosis in these cells at low concentrations, whereas most other myeloid leukemia cell lines are resistant to glucocorticoid-induced apoptosis. To experimentally address possible sensitive mechanisms in leukemia cells with AML1-ETO translocation, we generated aGC-resistant Kasumi-1 cell line by induction of 10^-6 M dexamethasone (Dex) for three weeks. The IC₅₀ of Dex to cells is increased from 2.5×10^-8 M for original GC-sensitive Kasumi-1 cell line ( K-S cell line) to more than 1×10^-5 M for induced GC-resistant Kasumi-1 cell line (K-R cell line). Since GC resistance often results from mutations in the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), all the exons of GR gene were sequenced and no mutation was found in K-R cells. Comparing to those in K-S cells, the GR protein level didn't decrease in K-R cells after 2h, 4h, 8h, 12h and 24h exposure to dexamethasone. Given that the difference of direct GR downstream genes between K-S and K-R cells may play a key role in the GC sensitivity, we systematically analyzed the changes of gene expression induced by Dex versus ethanol vehicle for 8h in K-S and K-R cells by high throughput RNA sequencing. The time point of 8h was selected according to the expression peaks of several foregone GR target genes after Dex induction. There were found 32 genes conversely regulated in K-S and K-R cells, including 14 mRNAs and 18 long non-coding RNAs. Pathway analysis indicated that the upregulated genes in K-S cells might promote the AML1-ETO fusion protein degradation by proteasomes, while the component genes of this pathway were downregulated in K-R cells. Further validation and function studies of these mRNAs and long non-coding RNAs are ongoing. Our data suggested that the downstream targets of GR among GC-sensitive and -resistant Kasumi-1 cells were significant different and they may contribute to the GC sensitivity and resistance by degradation or reservation of AML-ETO fusion protein and the regulation of apoptosis in t(8;21) leukemia cell subtype.