Antileukemic Activity of hsa-miR-203a-5p by Limiting Glutathione Metabolism in Imatinib-Resistant K562 Cells

Imatinib has been the first and most successful tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), but many patients develop resistance to it after a satisfactory response. Glutathione (GSH) metabolism is thought to be one of the factors causing the emergence of imatinib resistance. Since hsa-miR-203a-5p was found to downregulate Bcr-Abl1 oncogene and also a link between this oncogene and GSH metabolism is reported, the present study aimed to investigate whether hsa-miR-203a-5p could overcome imatinib resistance by targeting GSH metabolism in imatinib-resistant CML cells. After the development of imatinib-resistant K562 (IR-K562) cells by gradually exposing K562 (C) cells to increasing doses of imatinib, resistant cells were transfected with hsa-miR-203a-5p (R+203). Thereafter, cell lysates from various K562 cell sets (imatinib-sensitive, imatinib-resistant, and miR-transfected imatinib-resistant K562 cells) were used for GC-MS-based metabolic profiling. L-alanine, 5-oxoproline (also known as pyroglutamic acid), L-glutamic acid, glycine, and phosphoric acid (Pi)-five metabolites from our data, matched with the enumerated 28 metabolites of the MetaboAnalyst 5.0 for the GSH metabolism. All of these metabolites were present in higher concentrations in IR-K562 cells, but intriguingly, they were all reduced in R+203 and equated to imatinib-sensitive K562 cells (C). Concludingly, the identified metabolites associated with GSH metabolism could be used as diagnostic markers.