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Background: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is highly prevalent and heterogeneous among adult acute leukemias. Current chemotherapeutic approaches for AML often face the challenge of drug resistance, and AML immune cells play an important role in the regulation of AML drug resistance. Thus, it is of key significance to explore the regulatory mechanisms of immune cells in AML to alleviate chemotherapy resistance in AML.
Methods: Based on AML single-cell transcriptomic data, this study revealed the differences in the expression of immune cell subpopulations and marker genes in AML patients in the complete remission group (CR) compared to AML patients in the non-complete remission group (non-CR) after chemotherapy. Functional enrichment by clusterprofiler revealed the regulatory functions of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in AML. AUCell enrichment scores were used to assess the immunoregulatory functions of immune cells. Pseudotime analysis was used to construct immune cell differentiation trajectories. CellChat was used for cellular communication analysis to elucidate the interactions between immune cells. Survival analysis with the R package “survival” revealed the role of immune cell marker genes on AML prognosis. Finally, the wound healing and trans-well assay were performed.
Results: Single-cell clustering analysis revealed that NK/T cells and Macrophage cells subpopulations were upregulated in non-CR AML. Differential expression of genes in Macrophage cells during differentiation was revealed, which were significantly enriched in cellular energy metabolism, and immune cell activity regulation processes. differentially expressed NK cell marker genes between CR and non-CR groups mainly included HBA1, S100A8, and S100A9, which were associated with cancer drug resistance regulation, these marker genes of (FCAR, FCGR3A, PREX1, S100A8 and S100A9) were upregulated in human chronic myeloid leukemia cells (HAP1) and silencing of S100A8 affected migration and invasion of HAP1 cells. Cellular communication analyses showed that ligand-receptor pairs between NK cells and Macrophage cells mainly included HLA-E-KLRK1, HLA-E-KLRC1, HLA-E-CD94:NKG2A, CLEC2B-KLRB1. In addition, LGALS9-CD45, CCL3L1- CCR1, CCL3-CCR1 between these two immune cells mainly regulate secreted signaling to mediate AML progression. Marker genes in NK/T cells and Macrophage cells were significantly associated with AML prognosis.
Conclusion: This study reveals that the key immune cell subpopulations mediating chemoresistance in AML are NK cells and macrophages, and the key marker genes are HBA1, S100A8, and S100A9. These genes, which change dynamically during cell differentiation, are mainly enriched in pathways related to cellular energy metabolism and immune response. Meanwhile, ligand-receptor pairs between NK cells and macrophages that affect cellular interactions and secretion signals were profoundly revealed.