TRAIL is a potent inducer of apoptosis in myeloma cells derived from multiple myeloma patients and is not cytotoxic to hematopoietic stem cells.

TRAIL, the ligand for the newly discovered DR-4 and DR-5 receptor, is a member of the TNF family of death signal transduction proteins with a mechanism of cell death similar to that of Fas and Fas ligand (Fas-L) system. We provide first time evidence that TRAIL is a potent inducer of apoptosis in multiple myeloma (MM) cell lines. TRAIL effectively induced extensive apoptosis in 8226 and ARP-1 MM cells in a time- and dose-dependent manner. Apoptosis with TRAIL reached about 80% within 48 h of treatment with a dose of 160 ng/ml. Furthermore, we provide first time evidence that similar to Fas, TRAIL-induced apoptosis is not blocked by bcl-2 in MM cell lines. Most importantly, TRAIL induced substantial apoptosis in freshly isolated, flow-sorted myeloma cells obtained from different MM patients expressing variable levels of bcl-2. Finally, we demonstrate for the first time that TRAIL is not cytotoxic to purified CD34+/CD45dim hematopoietic stem cells and does not inhibit CFU-GM or BFU-E colony formation in methylcellulose.