Gadd45 in Normal Hematopoiesis and Leukemia

Gadd45a, Gadd45b, and Gadd45g have been implicated in cell cycle arrest, DNA repair, apoptosis, innate immunity, genomic stability, and modulation of normal blood cell development and leukemia. Each of the Gadd45 genes was shown to be regulated independently in myeloid cells in response to cytokine stimulation modulating blood cell survival and differentiation, including maintaining the quiescent stem cell pool. Gadd45a and Gadd45b were also shown to mediate the protective effects from UV in hematopoietic cells by separate signaling pathways involving either p38 activation or JNK inhibition. Furthermore, it was shown that gadd45a methylation in AML is predictive of poor survival. It was also shown that loss of Gadd45b accelerates the development of BCR-ABL driven CML in mice and leads to decreased median survival. The Gadd45b-deficient CML progenitors exhibited increased proliferation and decreased apoptosis, and this was associated with hyper-activation of c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase and Stat5. Moreover, loss of Gadd45a also accelerated the development of BCR-ABL driven CML, and this was associated with enhanced PI3K-AKT-mTOR-4E-BP1 signaling, upregulation of p30C/EBPα expression, and hyper-activation of p38 and Stat5. In human patients with chronic phase CML, gadd45a expression is up-regulated, whereas in accelerated and blast crisis phase patients, gadd45a is downregulated. Collectively, these results provide novel evidence that Gadd45a functions as a suppressor of BCR/ABL driven leukemia and may serve as a unique prognostic marker of CML progression. Thus Gadd45 proteins provide excellent targets for leukemia therapy.