Clinical relevance of a pharmacogenetic approach using multiple candidate genes to predict response and resistance to imatinib therapy in chronic myeloid leukemia.

PURPOSE: Imatinib resistance is major cause of imatinib mesylate (IM) treatment failure in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients. Several cellular and genetic mechanisms of imatinib resistance have been proposed, including amplification and overexpression of the BCR/ABL gene, the tyrosine kinase domain point mutations, and MDR1 gene overexpression.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: We investigated the impact of 16 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in five genes potentially associated with pharmacogenetics of IM, namely ABCB1, multidrug resistance 1; ABCG2, breast-cancer resistance protein; CYP3A5, cytochrome P450-3A5; SLC22A1, human organic cation transporter 1; and AGP, alpha1-acid glycoprotein. The DNAs from peripheral blood samples in 229 patients were genotyped.

RESULTS: The GG genotype in ABCG2 (rs2231137), AA genotype in CYP3A5 (rs776746), and advanced stage were significantly associated with poor response to IM especially for major or complete cytogenetic response, whereas the GG genotype at SLC22A1 (rs683369) and advanced stage correlated with high rate of loss of response or treatment failure to IM therapy.

CONCLUSIONS: We showed that the treatment outcomes of imatinib therapy could be predicted using a novel, multiple candidate gene approach based on the pharmacogenetics of IM.