A new research indicated that the treatment with poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors, together with chemotherapy drugs, could be applied for RUNX leukemia. This study was published in Cell journal Reports.

Unlike other cancer is more common in the elderly, leukemia has a high incidence among young people. In recent years, the breakthrough treatment of the leukemia is few. According to the previous study, RUNX1 is one of the most frequent mutations of genes in leukemia. And RUNX3 is associated with the development of the disease.

The result showed that ablation of both Runx1 and Runx3 led to defective DNA repair. Recent technological advances have shown frequent deletions of chromosome 21q, including the RUNX1 locus, in patients with congenital syndromic thrombocytopenia with leukemia predisposition.

It is clearly demonstrated that human leukemia cell lines expressing the RUNX1-ETO fusion gene are sensitive to MMC, at least partially in a fusion gene-dependent manner. This sensitivity was further enhanced in the presence of PARP inhibitor. The treatment with PARP inhibitors, together with DNA ICL and/or standard chemotherapy drugs, could be applied for RUNX leukemia. Because deregulation in RUNX family genes is now found in a wide spectrum of cancers, this combined therapy can potentially be extended to common cancers.

PARP is found in the cell’s nucleus. The main role is to detect and signal single-strand DNA breaks (SSB) to the enzymatic machinery involved in the SSB repair. In this study, PARP play the imported role in the treatment of the leukemia, and it is the breakthrough treatment of the leukemia.

Reference:

CQ Wang, V Krishnan, et al. Disruption of Runx1 and Runx3 Leads to Bone Marrow Failure and Leukemia Predisposition due to Transcriptional and DNA Repair Defects [J].Cell reports 2014, 8(3): 767–782.