Year 2

This grant focuses on generation of myeloproliferative disorder or neoplasm (MPN) stem cells from pluripotent (hESC) or multipotent (CB) stem cells and seeks to correlate their leukemic potential with that of MPN patient sample-derived stem cells. To provide a platform for testing induction of stem cell differentiation, survival and self-renewal by BCR-ABL versus JAK2, hESC were utilized in the first year and as more patient samples and cord blood became available these were utilized.

In the first year of this grant, we found that hESC undergo hematopoietic differentiation on AGM stroma to the CD34+ stage resulting in increased GATA-1, Flk2, ADAR1 and GATA-2 expression. Moreover, CD34+ differentiation was enhanced on a genetically engineered mouse stroma (SL/M2) secreting human SCF, IL-3 and G-CSF. Lentiviral BCR-ABL transduced hESC-derived CD34+ cells had higher BCR-ABL+ cellular transplantation potential than chronic phase (CP) CML progenitors, indicative of a higher survival capacity. However, they sustained self-renewal only when co-transduced with lentiviral -catenin (Rusert et al, manuscript in preparation) suggesting that blast crisis evolution requires acquisition of both enhanced survival and self-renewal potential. Similarly, lentiviral mouse mutant JAK2 expression in hESC or CB stem cells was insufficient to produce self-renewing MPN stem cells, indicating that the cellular context, nature of the genetic driver and responses to extrinsic cues from the microenvironment play seminal roles in regulating therapeutically resistant MPN stem cell properties such as aberrant survival, differentiation, self-renewal and dormancy.

In the second year of this five year grant, we have focused on human cord blood (CB) stem cells compared with a large number of MPN patient samples propagated on SL/M2 stroma or in RAG2-/-c-/- mice to more adequately recapitulate the human MPN stem cell niche. Also, to more faithfully recapitulate human (rather than the previously published lentiviral mouse JAK2 vectors, Cancer Cell 2008) JAK2 driven MPNs, we cloned human wild-type JAK2 and human JAK2 V617F from MPN patient samples into lentiviral-GFP vectors (Court Recart A*, Geron I* et al, manuscript in preparation). We also incorporated full transcriptome RNA (ABI SOLiD 4.0) sequencing, PCR array and nanofluidic phosphoproteomics technology to better gauge the impact of JAK2 versus BCR-ABL on stem cell fate, survival, self-renewal and dormancy in the context of specific malignant microenvironments and the relative susceptibility of MPN stem cells in these niches to single agent molecularly targeted inhibitors.