"Modulating Phosphoinositide Profiles as a Roadmap for Treatment in Acute Myeloid Leukemia".

Polyphosphoinositides (PPIns) and their modulating enzymes are involved in regulating many important cellular functions including proliferation, differentiation or gene expression, and their deregulation is involved in human diseases such as metabolic syndromes, neurodegenerative disorders and cancer, including Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). Given that PPIns regulating enzymes are highly druggable targets, several studies have recently highlighted the potential of targeting them in AML. For instance many inhibitors targeting the PI3K pathway are in various stages of clinical development and more recently other novel enzymes such as PIP4K2A have been implicated as AML targets. PPIns have distinct subcellular organelle profiles, in part driven by the specific localisation of enzymes that metabolise them. In particular, in the nucleus, PPIns are regulated in response to various extracellular and intracellular pathways and interact with specific nuclear proteins to control epigenetic cell state. While AML does not normally manifest with as many mutations as other cancers, it does appear in large part to be a disease of dysregulation of epigenetic signalling and many novel therapeutics are aimed at reprogramming AML cells toward a differentiated cell state or to one that is responsive to alternative successful but limited AML therapies such as ATRA. Here, we propose that by combining bioinformatic analysis with inhibition of PPIns pathways, especially within the nucleus, we might discover new combination therapies aimed at reprogramming transcriptional output to attenuate uncontrolled AML cell growth. Furthermore, we outline how different part of a PPIns signalling unit might be targeted to control selective outputs that might engender more specific and therefore less toxic inhibitory outcomes.

The effect of sequence context on the activity of cytosine DNA glycosylases.

We have prepared single (N204D) and double (N204D:L272A) mutants of human uracil DNA glycosylase (hUDG), generating two cytosine DNA glycosylases (hCDG and hCYDG). Both these enzymes are able to excise cytosine (but not 5-methylcytosine), when this base is part of a mismatched base pair. hCDG is more active than the equivalent E. coli enzyme (eCYDG) and also has some activity when the cytosine is paired with guanine, unlike eCYDG. hCDG also has some activity against single stranded DNA, while having poor activity towards an unnatural base pair that forces the cytosine into an extrahelical conformation (in contrast to eCYDG for which a bulky base enhances the enzyme's activity). We also examined how sequence context affects the activity of these enzymes, determining the effect of flanking base pairs on cleavage efficiency. An abasic site or a hexaethylene glycol linker placed opposite the target cytosine, also causes an increase in activity compared with an AC mismatch. Flanking an AC mismatch with GC base pairs resulted in a 100-fold decrease in excision activity relative to flanking AT base pairs and the 5'-flanking base pair had a greater effect on the rate of cleavage. However, this effect is not simply due to the stability of the flanking base pairs as adjacent GT mismatches also produce low cleavage efficiency.

A mutant of uracil DNA glycosylase that distinguishes between cytosine and 5-methylcytosine.

We demonstrate that a mutant of uracil DNA glycosylase (N123D:L191A) distinguishes between cytosine and methylcytosine. Uracil DNA glycosylase (UDG) efficiently removes uracil from DNA in a reaction in which the base is flipped into the enzyme's active site. Uracil is selected over cytosine by a pattern of specific hydrogen bonds, and thymine is excluded by steric clash of its 5-methyl group with Y66. The N123D mutation generates an enzyme that excises cytosine. This N123D:L191A mutant excises C when it is mispaired with A or opposite an abasic site, but not when it is paired with G. In contrast no cleavage is observed with any substrates that contain 5-methylcytosine. This enzyme may offer a new approach for discriminating between cytosine and 5-methylcytosine.