The insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor kinase inhibitor, NVP-ADW742, suppresses survival and resistance to chemotherapy in acute myeloid leukemia cells.

Deregulation of insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor (IGF-1R) is closely associated with malignant transformation and tumor cell survival in various cancers. We found that IGF-1R expression level in leukemia cells positively correlated with the percentage of blast in bone marrow from de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. Moreover, we showed that NVP-ADW742, a novel small weight molecular inhibitor of IGF-IR, could induce apoptosis in both HL-60 cell line and primary AML blasts. However, no significant alteration of cell cycle was observed in HL-60 cells. Further studies revealed that NVP-ADW742 induced Akt dephosphorylation, which might subsequently induce p38 phosphorylation and decrease antiapoptotic protein Bcl-2 expression in HL-60 cells. Finally, we demonstrated that NVP-ADW742 could synergize with Ara-C to induce the kill in a subset of drug-resistant AML specimens. We suggested that IGF-lR targeting might be therapeutically beneficial for some AML patients.