Genome-wide methylation profiling in decitabine-treated patients with acute myeloid leukemia

The outcome of older (≥ 60 years) acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients is poor, and novel treatments are needed. In a phase 2 trial for older AML patients, low-dose (20 mg/m(2) per day for 10 days) decitabine, a DNA hypomethylating azanucleoside, produced 47% complete response rate with an excellent toxicity profile. To assess the genome-wide activity of decitabine, we profiled pretreatment and post treatment (day 25/course 1) methylomes of marrow samples from patients (n = 16) participating in the trial using deep-sequencing analysis of methylated DNA captured by methyl-binding protein (MBD2). Decitabine significantly reduced global methylation compared with pretreatment baseline (P = .001). Percent marrow blasts did not correlate with global methylation levels, suggesting that hypomethylation was related to the activity of decitabine rather than to a mere decrease in leukemia burden. Hypomethylation occurred predominantly in CpG islands and CpG island-associated regions (P ranged from .03 to .04) A significant concentration (P < .001) of the hypomehtylated CpG islands was found in chromosome subtelomeric regions, suggesting a differential activity of decitabine in distinct chromosome regions. Hypermethylation occurred much less frequently than hypomethylation and was associated with low CpG content regions. Decitabine-related methylation changes were concordant with those previously reported in distinct genes. In summary, our study supports the feasibility of methylome analyses as a pharmacodynamic endpoint for hypomethylating therapies.