Mesenchymal Stem Cells Promote Survival of Leukemic Cells Via Integrin-Linked Kinase (ILK)-Dependent Akt and STAT3 Activation: Implications for Leukemia Therapy.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The β integrins play an important role in the cell-to-cell interactions, which trigger intracellular signal transduction pathways. Integrin-linked kinase (ILK) has been shown to directly interact with β integrins and phosphorylate Akt, which promotes cell survival. On the other hand, PI3K/Akt and JAK/STAT signaling pathways are also recognized as potent anti-apoptotic mediators activated by ligation of growth factor receptors. We have previously demonstrated that stroma cells protect acute promyelocytic leukemic (APL) cells from apoptosis (Tabe, Blood103:1815–1822, 2004). Here, we investigate the ability of bone marrow stroma cells to activate Akt, STAT3, and ILK signaling in leukemic cells co-cultured with stroma in low-serum conditions (0.5% FCS). Human mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), co-cultivated with APL-derived NB4 cells in direct cell-to-cell contact, partially inhibited spontaneous apoptosis and enhanced viability of NB4, while separation from stromal cells by transwell insert abrogated this supporting effect of MSC. Western blot analysis using phosphospecific antibodies demonstrated that direct cell-to-cell contact with MSC caused strong activation of Akt and STAT3 signaling in NB4 cells, which have low baseline phosphorylation of these proteins. Treatment with PI3K inhibitor LY294002 or JAK/STAT3 inhibitor (AG480) decreased both, Akt and STAT3 activation in NB4 cells, however, in cells co-cultured in direct contact with MSC the Akt and STAT3 phosphorylation levels were still significantly higher than in suspension cultures and in cells separated by transwell. These observations indicate cross-talk between PI3K/Akt and JAK/STAT pathways, and that Akt is activated independent from PI3K in NB4 cells through direct interaction with MSC. Both, LY294002 and AG480 induced apoptosis and decreased viability of suspension NB4 cells, but this effect was partially abrogated by MSC co-culture. Next, we examined the effects of these signal transduction inhibitors on MSC. MSC expressed both, phospho-Akt and phospho-Stat3, which was inhibited by LY294002 and AG480. LY294002 but not AG480 induced moderate apoptosis in MSC (annexin V positivity; MSC alone19.7 %; LY294002, 30.8%; AG480, 20.1% at 72 hours). Finally, we investigated Akt and STAT3 activation associated with ILK in NB4 cells. Treatment with ILK inhibitor KP004 (QLT Inc., Vancouver, Canada) decreased phosphorylation of Akt and STAT3 only in NB4 cells co-cultured with MSC and not in suspension cultures. The specific abrogation of MSC-mediated signaling resulted in higher induction of apoptosis in stroma co-cultured cells compared to suspension cells (annexin V positivity; KP004 treated suspension cultures 47.4±4.3%; MSC co-cultures 64.9±10.3%). These results indicate that bone marrow stroma cells support survival of leukemic cells through β integrin linked ILK, which activates Akt in a PI3K-independent manner and also stimulates STAT3. We propose that abrogation of ILK/Akt and STAT3 signaling may overcome protective effects of the bone marrow microenvironment on APL cells and thereby greatly enhance anti-leukemic therapies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".