Bone marrow stromal cells induce an ALDH+ stem cell-like phenotype and enhance chemotherapy resistance in AML cells through a TGF-β-p38-ALDH2 pathway

Our study aims to examine the interaction between AML cells and other cells in the tumor microenvironment, specifically bone marrow derived mesenchymal stromal cells. To delineate the specific genes/pathways involved in this interaction, we have co-cultured AML cell lines alone or with bone marrow derived mesenchymal stromal cells for 3 days, extracted total RNA from AML cells and analyzed the samples by RNA-seq. We identified the genes that are differentially expressed in co-cultured AML cells compared to AML cells alone. We found that TGF-β1 associated gene signature is activated in AML cells in the presence of BM-MSCs compared to AML cells alone. We examined differential gene expression in AML cell lines cultured alone versus AML cell lines co-cultured with BM-MSCs for 3 days