EXPRESSION OF CONSTITUTIVELY ACTIVATED HUMAN C-KIT IN MYB TRANSFORMEDEARLY MYELOID CELLS LEADS TO FACTOR INDEPENDENCE, HISTIOCYTIC DIFFERENTIATION, AND TUMORIGENICITY
P. Ferrao et al., EXPRESSION OF CONSTITUTIVELY ACTIVATED HUMAN C-KIT IN MYB TRANSFORMEDEARLY MYELOID CELLS LEADS TO FACTOR INDEPENDENCE, HISTIOCYTIC DIFFERENTIATION, AND TUMORIGENICITY, Blood, 90(11), 1997, pp. 4539-4552
The cDNAs encoding wild type (WT) human receptor tyrosine kinase c-Kit
and a constitutively activated mutant, V816Kit, were introduced into
granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)-dependent ea
rly murine hemopoietic cells, which had been transformed with activate
d Myb, WTKit cells were able to grow in the presence of the human liga
nd for Kit, stem cell factor (SCF), but displayed reduced growth and c
lonogenic potential in either SCF or GM-CSF compared with the parental
cells in GM-CSF. In contrast, V816Kit cells grew without factor at a
higher rate than the parental cells in GM-CSF and displayed increased
clonogenicity. Dissection of the growth characteristics in liquid cult
ure showed that in the presence of appropriate factors, the different
populations had similar proliferation rates, but that V816Kit profound
ly increased cell survival compared with WTKit or parental cells, This
suggests that the signals transduced by WTKit activated with SCF, and
by V816Kit, were not identical. Also, WTKit and V816Kit-expressing ce
lls both varied from the early myeloid progenitor phenotype of the par
ental cells and gave rise to a small number of large to giant adherent
cells that expressed macrophage (alpha-naphthyl acetate) esterase and
neutrophil (naphtol-AS-D-chloroacetate) esterase, were highly phagocy
tic and phenotypically resembled histiocytes. Thus, WTKit activated by
SCF and V816Kit were able to induce differentiation in a proportion o
f Myb-transformed myeloid cells. The factor independent V816Kit cells,
unlike the parental and WTKit expressing cells, were shown to produce
tumors of highly mitotic, invasive cells at various stages of differe
ntiation in syngeneic mice. These results imply that constitutively ac
tivated Kit can promote the development of differentiated myeloid tumo
rs and that its oncogenic effects are not restricted to lineages (mast
cell and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia), which have been report
ed previously. Furthermore, the mixed populations of cells in culture
and in the tumors phenotypically resembled the leukemic cells from pat
ients with monocytic leukemia with histiocytic differentiation (acute
myeloid leukemia-M5c), a newly proposed subtype of myeloid leukemia. (
C) 1997 by The American Society of Hematology.