Apicidin confers promising therapeutic effect on acute myeloid leukemia cells via increasing QPCT expression.

Lulu Liu, Haihui Liu, Lei Liu, Qian Huang, Chunyan Yang, Panpan Cheng, Saisai Ren, Jingjing Zhang, Mingxiao Yu, Xinying Ma, Wenjun Song, Lulu Chen, Hao Zhang, Mingtai Chen, Xianning Zhang

Cancer biology & therapy 2023 Dec 31

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Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous hematologic malignancy characterized by abnormal cell proliferation, apoptosis repression and myeloid differentiation blockade of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. Developing and identifying novel therapeutic agents to reverse the pathological processes of AML are of great significance. Here in this study, we found that a fungus-derived histone deacetylase inhibitor, Apicidin, presents promising therapeutic effect on AML by inhibiting cell proliferation, facilitating apoptosis and inducing myeloid differentiation of AML cells. Mechanistic investigation revealed that QPCT is identified as a potential downstream target of Apicidin, which exhibits significantly decreased expression in AML samples compared with the normal controls and is remarkably up-regulated in AML cells upon Apicidin management. Functional study and rescue assay demonstrated that QPCT depletion further promotes cell proliferation, inhibits apoptosis and impairs myeloid differentiation of AML cells, alleviating the anti-leukemic effect of Apicidin on AML. Our findings not only provide novel therapeutic target for AML, but also lay theoretical and experimental foundation for the clinical application of Apicidin in AML patients.

Citation

Lulu Liu, Haihui Liu, Lei Liu, Qian Huang, Chunyan Yang, Panpan Cheng, Saisai Ren, Jingjing Zhang, Mingxiao Yu, Xinying Ma, Wenjun Song, Lulu Chen, Hao Zhang, Mingtai Chen, Xianning Zhang. Apicidin confers promising therapeutic effect on acute myeloid leukemia cells via increasing QPCT expression. Cancer biology & therapy. 2023 Dec 31;24(1):2228497