The chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) development is associated with the formation of the BCR/ABL1 fusion gene and the BCR/ABL1 protein with increased tyrosine kinase activity. Despite the high efficiency of targeted therapy, up to 30% of patients do not respond on such therapy i.e. are primary resistant. The presence of BCR/ABL1 kinase domain mutations is considered to be one of the reasons of tyrosin kinase inhibitors resistance. To evaluate the frequency of BCR/ABL1 kinase domain mutations in Ukrainian cohort of CML patients with primary resistance to imatinib therapy, we retrospectively studied BCR/ABL1 kinase domain mutations in peripheral blood of 107 CML patients. The nucleotide sequence was determined by direct sequencing by Sanger. Mutations were reported in 45 of 107 (41.7%) CML patients. Two mutations at a time were revealed in 8 patients. So a total of 53 mutations were found out. Among them 49 were missense-mutations and 4 - deletions of different regions of the BCR/ABL1 kinase domain gene. The missense-mutations F359I/V (12 patients), T315I (8 patients) and G250E (6 patients) were most common. By localization, the mutations majority (23 of 53) was in the P-loop, 10 mutations - in the contact site, 13 mutations - in the catalytic domain and 6 – in the A-loop. Of the detected mutations, 26 (49%) resulted in a disruption of the hydrogen bond between BCR/ABL1-tyrosine kinase and imatinib. Significant reduction in overall survival was found in patients with BCR/ABL1 kinase domain mutations compared with patients with wild-type of BCR/ABL1 gene (p=0.018). The estimated 3-year overall survival was 83.4% (95% CI: 77.0%-89.8%) and 94.3% (95% CI: 91.0%-97.3%), respectively. Therefore, mutations of the BCR/ABL1 kinase domain are one of the mechanisms of primary resistance in CML patients on imatinib therapy. The occurrence of BCR/ABL1 gene mutations impairs the prognosis of imatinib therapy response.
Perils of Ignoring Overall Survival in Interpreting the Myeloma Literature
