A Phenotypic Screen Identifies a Compound Series That Induces Differentiation of Acute Myeloid Leukemia Cells In Vitro and Shows Antitumor Effects In Vivo.

Induction of differentiation is a promising therapeutic strategy against acute myeloid leukemia. However, current differentiation therapies are effective only to specific patient populations. To identify novel differentiation agents with wider efficacy, we developed a phenotypic high-throughput screen with a range of genetically diverse cell lines. From the resulting hits, one chemical scaffold was optimized in terms of activity and physicochemical properties to yield OXS007417, a proof-of-concept tool compound, which was also able to decrease tumor volume in a murine in vivo xenograft model.