Inhibition of growth of human leukemia cell lines by retrovirally expressed wild-type p16INK4A.

Loss of the p16INK4A gene by homozygous deletions or point mutations is attributed to the development of many types of cancers including leukemia. T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemias (T-ALLs) and B-cell ALLs show a remarkable rate of 75 and 20% homozygous deletion of this gene, respectively. Restoration of p16 expression in p16-deficient solid tumor cell lines results in a dramatic reduction of growth and maligant phenotype. To test the hypothesis that p16INK4A suppresses the growth of p16-deficient leukemias, we utilized a retroviral system to restore wild-type (wt) or mutant p16 protein expression. We tested the efficacy of our system by expressing the wt or mutant p16 genes in the osteosarcoma cell line, U20S, which lacks p16 and retains functional retinoblastoma protein (pRb). The wt p16 protein formed complexes with both cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK) 4 and 6 and inhibited U20S growth by 30-fold. The p16 mutants E120K and R144C formed complexes with CDK4 and CDK6 in cells and inhibited cell growth as effectively as wt p16 (20-fold) while the mutant proteins that did not complex with detectable levels of CDK4 or CDK6 only inhibited growth 0.25- and five-fold (G101W and D141, respectively) or not at all (H83Y and DA4). The COOH-terminal 'tail' of the wt p16 protein (amino acid residues 141-156), missing in mutant D141, enhanced the growth suppressive capability of p16. The amino acid substitutions in mutants G101W and H83Y not only disrupted CDK4 and CDK6 binding, but decreased the protein half-lives by two- and three-fold, respectively, compared to wt p16. The wt, but not mutant p16 genes, effectively inhibited the growth of T cell acute lymphoblastic (CEM) and myeloid leukemia (NB-4 and K562) cell lines that lacked the p16 gene, but retained functional pRb. Growth of the T-ALL cell line, HSB-2, which lacked both p16 and pRb, was not inhibited, indicating the growth suppression involved the pRb pathway. These results define regions critical for the function of p16 and demonstrate that restoration of wt p16 expression in p16-deficient leukemias significantly reverted their transformed phenotype and inhibited their growth.