1. ¹Department of Pathophysiology, Shanghai Institute of Hematology, Rui-Jin Hospital, Shanghai Second Medical University (SSMU), Shanghai, China
2. ²Division of Functional Genomics of Cancer, Health Science Center, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences-SSMU, Shanghai, China
3. ³Department of Medicine, University of Freiburg Medical Center, Freiburg, Germany

Correspondence: Dr G-Q Chen, Department of Pathophysiology, Shanghai Institute of Hematology, Shanghai Second Medical University (SSMU), Rui-Jin Hospital, 197 Rui-Jin Road II, Shanghai 200025, China. Fax: +86 21 64154900; E-mail: chengq@shsmu.edu.cn or gqchen@sibs.ac.cn

⁴These authors contributed equally to this work

Received 16 August 2004; Accepted 7 February 2005; Published online 5 May 2005.

Abstract

We reported recently that cobalt chloride-simulated hypoxia and mild hypoxia modified the differentiation of human acute myeloid leukemic (AML) cells, probably acting via a hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1)-dependent mechanism. In this study, we investigated the effect of desferrioxamine (DFO), an iron chelator with 'hypoxia-mimetic' activity, on the differentiation of AML cells. The results showed that DFO at nontoxic concentrations induced the differentiation of AML cell lines NB4 and U937, as assessed by morphological criteria and differentiation-associated antigens. DFO-induced differentiation parallel to the rapid accumulation of HIF-1 protein in these two cell lines. Of importance, the transient transfection of HIF-1 cDNA induced U937 cells to develop the differentiation-related alterations such as growth arrest and increased CD11b expression. Furthermore, the inducible expression of chromosome translocation t(8;21)-generated leukemogenic AML1-ETO fusion gene attenuated DFO-induced differentiation of U937 cells with the decrease of CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha (C/EBP), a critical factor for granulocytic differentiation. Using immunoprecipitation and luciferase reporter assay, HIF-1 was also shown to interact physically with and to increase the transcriptional activity of C/EBP. Taken together, these results provided novel evidence for a role of HIF-1 in AML cell differentiation, and suggested that C/EBP might be a downstream effector for HIF-1-mediated differentiation.