Inhibition of Critical DNA Dioxygenase Activity in IDH1/2 Mutant Myeloid Neoplasms

Neomorphic mutations in IDH1/2 producing R-2-Hydroxyglutrate (R-2HG), are common in myeloid malignancies and in various solid cancers. A diffuse hypermethylated status is the biological consequence of the R-2HG-mediated inhibition of several α-ketoglutarate (αKG)-dependent enzymes including DNA dioxygenases TET1, TET2 and TET3.^1,2 Specifically, the inhibition of TET2, either induced by the interaction with R-2HG or by direct genomic silencing (as in case of TET2 loss of function mutations) is responsible for the block of the DNA cytosine demethylation pathway, inducing changes in expression patterns, (e.g. decreasing expression of tumor suppressor genes) and impairing execution of differentiation programs. Analysis of genomic data from a Cleveland Clinic (CCF) cohort of AML/MDS patients combined in a meta-analytic fashion with BeatAML³ and Tumor Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohorts (1119 profiled patients) showed that IDH1/2 mutations are mutually exclusive (only 3% [N=4/106] of AML IDH1/2 mutated cases had TET2 mutations, expected to be at a frequency of 18% [N=110/585] in IDH1/2 wild type cases, p=.000125).

In this scenario we suggest that the loss of TET2 activity due to mutations prevents the expansion of IDH1/2 mutant myeloid neoplasms (MNs) because of phenotypic redundancies inducing synthetic lethality. With this premise we stipulated that a critical level of DNA dioxygenase activity exists and thus cells with low TET2 activity will not tolerate further inhibition by R-2HG. Here we propose to apply pharmacologic inhibition of TET2 to produce an additive effect on DNA dioxygenases to investigate whether this will result in a synthetic lethality of IDH1/2 mutant cells. Specifically we hypothesize that TET-dioxygenase inhibition may be implemented as a possible therapeutic strategy in neomorphic IDH1/2 mutant MNs.

To explore this hypothesis we conducted a series of in vitro experiments in different isogenic cell lines expressing either mutant or wild type IDH1 or IDH2, that were simultaneously mutant, wild type (^WT) or knock down (^KD) for TET2 (TF1-IDH2^R140Q, K562-IDH1^R132C both WT for TET2 gene, and K18-IDH1^R132C TET2^KD and SIGM5-IDH1^R132C TET2^MT, both with a doxycycline inducible promoter for mutant IDH1). First we found that the doxycycline induction of ectopic IDH1^R132C expression led to R-2HG increase (~10,000-fold over the baseline) and induced cell death in TET2-deficient cells (experiments conducted in SIGM5-IDH1^R132C cells showing 70% of decrease in cell growth after five days of IDH induction with doxycycline), confirming the cytotoxic effect of cellular R-2HG. We then tested in IDH1/2^MT cells sensitivity towards TETi76, a specific TET inhibitor designed on R-2HG scaffold (with more than 200 fold potency compared to R-2HG in cell-free assays of 5-hydroxy-methyl cytosine [5hMC] production).⁴ This compound showed particular selectivity towards inhibition of DNA dioxygenases when a set of 23 other dioxygenase inhibitors were screened. Most importantly, consistent with our hypothesis, TETi76 preferentially inhibited the proliferation of IDH1/2^MT cells either following doxycycline-induction both in TET2^WT and TET2 deficient models (K562 TET2^WT, K18 TET2^kD, SIGM-5 TET2^MT cell lines), or in models not carrying the inducible promoter (TF1 TET^WT) (Growth inhibition: 20-25% in IDH^WT vs 70-80% in IDH^MT cell lines after 72h of co-culture with TETi76 treatment for concentrations ranging between 1 and 5 µM. P-value range: 0.04-0.001 in pairwise comparisons with untreated controls ).

Overall, our findings are consistent with the idea that neomorphic IDH1/2^MT phenocopies loss of function TET2^MT, through R-2HG, down-modulating pathways fundamental for cell homeostasis, division and differentiation. If a residual TET-activity is needed for the function of IDH1/2^MT cells, the complete block of the residual activity appears to inevitably disrupt this phenotype impairing cell growth and proliferation. This is also in agreement with the paucity of TET3 and TET1 mutation in the context of TET2^MT carriers. In summary, results shown here represent an important proof of concept that the increased inhibition of DNA dioxygenase activity, instead of being more leukemogenic, can be synthetically lethal. Our observations may have implications with regard to the therapy of IDH1/2 mutated neoplasms including AML and MDS