Roots of imatinib resistance: a question of self-renewal?

The BCR-ABL-fusion gene is critical for the development of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and BCR-ABL positive acute lymphatic leukemia (Ph+ ALL). Blocking BCR-ABL by the ABL tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib mesylate (IM, Gleevec) is clinically highly efficient. Treatment response is unfortunately compromised by the emergence of IM resistance, which is regularly seen in accelerated and blastic phase of CML (CML-AP/BP) and in Ph+ ALL. BCR-ABL kinase domain mutations are then considered the causative mechanism of IM resistance, because 50-60% of the IM resistant patients harbour such mutations. In contrast, IM resistance arises very rarely in patients that are treated with IM in early chronic phase of CML. This implies that BCR-ABL independent factors such as the cellular context of BCR-ABL expression and stage of disease decisively control the evolution of IM resistance. In line with this, novel Abl-kinase inhibitors such as dasatinib (DA) or nilotinib (NI) - although capable of inhibiting most of the BCR/-BL kinase mutants - still often fail to overcome resistance and do mostly not induce durable cytogenetic responses in IM resistant CML-AP/BC and Ph+ ALL patients. On the basis of available evidence it is proposed here that alternative genetic aberrations, which synergize with BCR-ABL to enable leukemic self-renewal are of causal importance for the evolution of clinical kinase inhibitor resistance. Kinase mutations may in turn reflect clonal variants of cells that emerge on the basis of an already existing IM resistant and self-renewing leukemic cell population. This model has clinical implications as it implies that even highly potent Abl-kinase inhibition can not target the genetic basis of IM resistance and will also not resolve the problem of Abl-kinase inhibitor resistance.