Targeting MTHFD2 in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Purpose: Identify new targets in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Methods: MOLM-14 cells were transduced with lentivirus encoding shRNAs targeting MTHFD2 (shMTHFD2 hairpin TRCN0000036553, denoted M5) and control (LacZ, shControl TRCN0000072231). RNA from 6 samples, biological duplicates (LacZ1, LacZ2; M5-1, M5-2) and a technical replicate (LacZ3, M5-3) were sequenced as 50+50 bp paired-end reads using Illumina TruSeq strand specific library. The pool of six samples was sequenced on two lanes of an Illumina HiSeq, generating 101bp paired end reads. The software package RSEM (Li et al., 2001) was run using Bowtie (version 1.0.0) to align the reads that passed quality filters to the hg19 GENCODE version 17 (http://www.gencodegenes.org/releases/17.html) transcriptome and to quantify transcript abundance at isoform and gene level. Results: MTHFD2 suppression induces AML differentiation. There was upregulation of well-validated myeloid differentiation genes and gene sets consistent with myeloid maturation. Conclusion: Our study supports the therapeutic targeting of MTHFD2 in AML. mRNA profiles of shMTHFD2 and shControl MOLM-14 cells were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina TruSeq library.