Imatinib mesylate selectively influences the cellular metabolism of cytarabine in BCR/ABL negative leukemia cell lines and normal CD34+ progenitor cells

Abstract

STI-571 (Imatinib/Glivec) has been shown to have synergism with various chemotherapeutic agents including cytosine arabinoside (Ara-C) in BCR/ABL positive leukemia cells. The antiproliferative and proapopotic effects of STI-571 in these experiments are mainly explained by its ability to specifically block the fusion-protein BCR/ABL which has a constitutively active tyrosine kinase activity. We investigated the effects of STI-571 in combination with Ara-C on BCR/ABL negative leukemia cell lines and CD34+ hematopoietic progenitor cells in-vitro. Raji, HL-60, K562, Kasumi and KG1a leukemia cells and CD34+ cells from healthy donors were incubated with 5-20 microg/ml Ara-C for 5 h alone or in combination with 10 microg/ml STI-571. Intracellular levels of Ara-CTP measured by HPLC were increased 1.5-3 fold in leukemia cells with most promiment effects in HL-60, Kasumi and Raji cells. In HL-60 cells a linear correlation between the concentration of STI-571 (1-10 microg/ml) and the subsequent levels of Ara-CTP was observed. A linear increase of Ara-CTP could be induced by increasing the incubation time with STI-571 from 2-6 h with a ceiling effect after 8 h. In contrast coincubation of mononuclear cells or purified CD34+ cells with STI-571 at therapeutic concentrations lead to decreased intracellular levels of Ara-CTP. The synergism between Ara-C and STI-571 was even more pronounced in Raji and HL-60 cells when 300 ng/ml G-CSF were added at the beginning of the culture period. Intracellular measurements of STI-571 revealed no decreased or increased levels of the compound when increasing Ara-C concentrations were used. Our findings indicate that STI-571 can have significant impact on nucleoside metabolism in malignant and non-malignant hematopoietic cells. Further investigations will have to show whether theses effects can lead to increased cytotoxicity in primary blasts of patients with acute leukemia.