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Galectin-3 in pre-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Leukemia volume 27, pages 2385–2388 (2013)Cite this article

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Only 30–40% of adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) achieve long-term, disease-free survival and can be considered cured. The remainder will eventually relapse and die from disease progression or other ALL-related consequences.1, 2 Relapse most frequently originates in the bone marrow (BM),3 where stroma protects ALL cells against drug treatment.4

The development of drug resistance in ALL cells as occurs in vivo can be modeled by coculture of ALL cells in the presence of irradiated stromal cells during drug exposure. We have shown previously that this allows for the outgrowth of drug-insensitive leukemic cells (e.g. Zhang et al5), in a process that has been named environmental-mediated drug resistance. Microarray analysis on precursor B-lineage (pre-B) ALL cells from a BCR/ABL transgenic mouse model for Ph-positive ALL undergoing environmental-mediated drug resistance showed significantly increased expression of mRNAs related to stress and inflammation.6 Among others, we found that transcript levels of the Galectin-3 gene (Lgals3) were significantly increased upon development of resistance to the Bcr/Abl-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor nilotinib, and this was also seen in pre-B ALL cells isolated from the BM of BCR/ABL transgenic mice that had been treated with nilotinib for 8 days.6

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Acknowledgements

We thank Markus Müschen for generously sharing the Bcr/Abl transduction/retroviral packaging plasmids. MvI gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Australian Research Council through the award of a Federation Fellowship. This project was initiated during the sabbatical of JG at the Institute for Glycomics of Griffith University (Gold Coast, Australia) with support from the University of Southern California. This study was supported by PHS grants CA090321, CA172040 and a grant from the V-foundation (to NH).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Hematology/Oncology, Section of Molecular Carcinogenesis, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    F Fei, M Lim, A Arutyunyan, J Groffen & N Heisterkamp

  2. Division of Research Immunology/Bone Marrow Transplantation, Department of Pediatrics, The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    H Abdel-Azim

  3. Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, Southport, Queensland, Australia

    M von Itzstein

  4. Leukemia Research Program, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    J Groffen & N Heisterkamp

  5. Leukemia and Lymphoma Program, Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    J Groffen & N Heisterkamp

  6. Departments of Pediatrics and Pathology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    J Groffen & N Heisterkamp

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  1. F Fei
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  2. H Abdel-Azim
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  6. J Groffen
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Correspondence to N Heisterkamp.

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Fei, F., Abdel-Azim, H., Lim, M. et al. Galectin-3 in pre-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Leukemia 27, 2385–2388 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/leu.2013.175

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