Molecular Basis of Genomic Instability and Progression in Multiple Myeloma: Potential Role of Apurinic (Apyrimidinic) Endonuclease.

Genetic instability is a prominent feature of most cancers including multiple myeloma (MM) and is responsible for ongoing accrual of mutational changes which may lead to development of drug resistance and metastasis. The molecular basis for the generation of genetic diversity in MM is therefore extremely important to understand carcinogenesis and to identify novel targets for treatment. As genomic rearrangements require excision of DNA, we hypothesized that an elevated endonuclease activity may induce recombination and subsequent genomic instability in cancer cells. We developed a plasmid degradation assay that confirmed significantly elevated endonuclease activity in MM cells compared to normal plasma cells. To identify the pre-dominating endonuclease the degradation assay was carried out in the presence of specific endonuclease inhibitors, which identified apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease (Ape1 and Ape2) as the predominant endonucleases in mediating increased endonuclease activity in MM. Gene expression analysis confirmed > 2 fold elevation of Ape1 or Ape2 or both in 5 of 6 MM cell lines and 12 of 15 patient samples. Both immunocytochemistry and western blot analyses confirmed upregulation of Ape1 protein in all MM cell lines and patient samples. Next, we investigated the role of elevated APE endonuclease activity in DNA recombination and subsequent genomic re-arrangements. Using a plasmid-based assay we have previously demonstrated significantly elevated homologous recombination (HR) in MM. To investigate the role of elevated AP endonuclease activity in MM, we cultured myeloma cells in the presence of methoxyamine (MX), which specifically inhibits AP endonuclease activity, and evaluated its effect on HR activity and genome-wide appearance of new mutations. Exposure of intact myeloma cells to MX resulted in > 90% inhibition of HR activity and a significant (71±10.9%; p<0.05) reduction in the appearance of new mutations compared to untreated cells, as assessed by genome-wide loss of heterozygosity (LOH) assay (Affymetrix). We also evaluated the effects of overexpression of Ape1 & 2 in normal fibroblasts which have low endonuclease activity. The transgenic upregulation of AP endonucleases (Ape1 and Ape2) in normal cells led to a significant increase in the lecombination activity, leading to a marked mutational instability as indicated by the appearance of over 20,063 and 20,143 new LOH loci per 100,000 polymorphic regions examined throughout the genome, at population doublings 25 and 50 respectively. Mutational instability was also associated with chromosomal instability confirmed by spectral karyotyping of these cells showing significant numerical and structural chromosomal abnormalities. These changes were associated with indefinite growth of cells and formation of tumors when injected in SCID mice. These data suggest that elevated AP endonuclease may be responsible for mutational and chromosomal instabilities, leading to progression of myeloma.