The cellular hierarchy of acute myeloid leukemia informs personalized treatment

Abstract

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is characterized by malignant myeloid precursors that span a cellular hierarchy from dedifferentiated leukemic stem cells to mature blasts. While the diagnostic and prognostic importance of AML blast maturation is increasingly recognized, personalized therapies are currently not tailored to a patients individual makeup of this cellular hierarchy. In this study, we use multiplexed image-based ex vivo drug screening (pharmacoscopy) to systematically quantify the drug sensitivity across the cellular hierarchy of AML patients. We analyzed 174 prospective and longitudinal patient samples from 44 newly diagnosed AML patients, which indicated that differences in the AML hierarchy significantly identified poor responses to first-line therapy, outperforming European LeukemiaNet (ELN) criteria. Critically, drug response profiling across the AML hierarchy of each patient improved the accuracy of predicting patient response to first-line therapy (AUC 0.91), and revealed alternative individualized treatment options targeting the complete AML hierarchy of non-responding patients. We confirmed these findings in an independent cohort of 26 relapsed/refractory AML patients, for whom pan-hierarchy response profiling improved response predictions post hoc. Overall, our results quantify the clinical importance of therapeutically targeting the complete cellular hierarchy of newly diagnosed AML, and identify multiplexed image-based ex vivo drug screening to enable quantification and targeting of the AML maturation hierarchy for improved personalized treatment.