Study finds inhibition of PDK1 holds promise for acute myeloid leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains difficult to treat because of high genetic heterogeneity not only between different patients, but also between subclonal populations of cancer cells within the same patient

Now, in a new study, researchers from research institutions such as the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the University of Barcelona in Spain have found that a key enzyme in glucose metabolism, pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 1 (PDK1), is a key enzyme in leukemia stem cells containing a large number of leukemia stem cells.

PDK1: a determinant of different metabolic states

In the new study, PDK1 was identified as a determinant of different metabolic states

Integrated metabolomic, proteomic and transcriptomic analysis of major energy flows in AML and normal hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells

Image via Nature Communications, 2022, doi:10.

The authors applied metabolomic, proteomic, genomic and transcriptomic techniques, as well as gene ontology and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), among others

These findings also indicate that inhibition of PDK1 induces mitochondrial stress and improves the efficacy of glutaminase inhibitor-based antitumor therapies

Note: The original text has been deleted

References:

Ayşegül Erdem et al.