The Transmembrane Protein CD37 Is Not a Promising Therapeutic Target in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia

Acute myeloid leukaemia is a disease of the haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells distinguished by an impairment of proliferation, propagation and differentiation of the haematopoietic lineage[1]. AML is a heterogenous disease, where patient stratification and personalised therapeutic strategies are of importance[2]. The transmembrane protein CD37 has been associated with regulation of cell to cell interaction and proliferation in both B and T cells. Mice knockout studies have suggested that CD37 is not crucial for B cell development, however, it is highly expressed in malignant and suboptimal conditions and thus represent a good target for B-cell malignancies[3]. Pereira et al. reported that their anti-CD37 antibody-drug conjugate was a potential therapeutic in AML[4]. Their study revealed anti-leukemic effect in primary AML material and cell lines bothin vivoandin vitro.

An investigation of CD37 expression in AML patients is needed to understand the relevance of CD37 immunotherapy.

To investigate the relevance of targeted therapy of CD37 the chimeric mAb NNV003 anti-CD37 antibody was evaluated in AML samples. Single-cell time-of-flight mass cytometry (CyTOF), an established tool to analyse the immune signalling in bone marrow and peripheral blood, was used to investigate CD37 expression in 59 AML patient samples. A panel was designed to categorise hierarchical landscape of AML and the leukemic stem cell population (LSCs). CyTOF identified CD37 expression exclusively in the B-cell population of our 59 patients, whereas the AML blast population was negative for CD37 expression. Flow cytometry, however; identified 5/59 patients with CD37 expression in the leukemic blast population.

Although previous studies show that an anti-CD37 drug conjugate showed anti-leukemic effectin vivoandin vitro, our results do not support that it is a promising therapeutic biomarker. We have uncovered that malignant expression of CD37 is not a feature of the AML patients investigated. We do not consider CD37 to be a promising and good target for precision therapy of AML.

1. Kayser, S. and M.J. Levis, Advances in targeted therapy for acute myeloid leukaemia. Br J Haematol, 2018. 180(4): p. 484-500.

2. Patel, J.P., et al., Prognostic relevance of integrated genetic profiling in acute myeloid leukemia. N Engl J Med, 2012. 366(12): p. 1079-89.

3. Payandeh, Z., et al., Anti-CD37 targeted immunotherapy of B-Cell malignancies. Biotechnol Lett, 2018. 40(11-12): p. 1459-1466.

4. Pereira, D.S., et al., AGS67E, an Anti-CD37 Monomethyl Auristatin E Antibody-Drug Conjugate as a Potential Therapeutic for B/T-Cell Malignancies and AML: A New Role for CD37 in AML. Mol Cancer Ther, 2015. 14(7): p. 1650-60.