In the present study, we developed a screening DHPLC method followed by sequencing analysis to detect and confirm the presence of
IDH mutations in newly diagnosed AML patients. Twenty cases of
IDH1 mutations and 24 cases of
IDH2 mutations were discovered among the entire newly diagnosed AML cohort. Previous reports from the Asia continent were available from two countries, i.e. Taiwan [
18] and China [
28,
31,
32] while the Western studies were from USA [
5,
15,
20,
22,
29], Canada [
19], France [
41], Germany [
21,
23,
25,
27], the Netherlands [
24], and UK [
26,
30] (Table ). The overall frequency of
IDH mutations appears to vary between 2-14% for
IDH1 and 1-19% for
IDH2 from most Western reports [
5,
15,
19,
27,
29,
30,
41]. Worthy of note, the frequency of
IDH1 mutations in our population of 8.4% was comparable to 8.5% in the first study reported by Mardis
et al. in 2009 [
5] although these figures were somewhat higher than those of the Chinese AML studies (5.5%, 5.6%, 6.3%, and 3.6%) [
18,
28,
31,
32]. The frequency of
IDH2 mutations of 10.4% in our cases was also slightly higher than the only available
IDH2 study from Asia (8.3%, 4/48) [
28]. The frequency discrepancies among various studies may reflect the variable inclusion criteria of the study samples, the variable sensitivity of the detection assays, the selective inclusion or exclusion of certain
IDH aberrations or the true racial differences.
| Table 5Incidence of IDH mutations in AML patients from various countries |
IDH1 mutations consisting of six different amino acid exchanges at p.R132 (n = 19) and p.I99M (n = 1) were identified. Within the p.R132 group, arginine was replaced by histidine (R132H) in most cases (n = 8, 40%), followed by cysteine (R132C; n = 6, 30%), serine (R132S; n = 2, 10%), glycine (R132G; n = 2, 10%) and leucine (R132L, n = 1, 5%). This pattern was extremely different to the mutation pattern reported in glioma, where R132H was predominant observed in 88% of all cases while R132C present in only 4.5% [
13]. To date, results from structural and functional assays by several multicenter trials suggested that
IDH1 R132, which resides at the active site of enzyme substrate affinity, promotes oncogenesis in both glioma and AML [
9,
11,
20,
33]. In the p.I99M case, isoleucine was substituted by methionine which was recently identified as a novel missense mutation in the Chinese cohort by Zou
et al [
28]. The same study revealed that this evolutionary point mutation was also located in the substrate binding site of enzyme and may drive pathogenesis; however, the exact mechanism needs further investigation. In addition, we detected one silent polymorphism (
IDH1G105G) in 3 cases (1.3%). Wagner
et al. [
21] previously reported that
IDH1G105G allele conferred an adverse prognostic impact to patients' survival.
The identified
IDH2 mutations involved two different types of amino acid substitution spanning exon 4 of the
IDH2 gene at arginine 140 and arginine 172. Of note, the former arginine was replaced by glutamine (R140Q; n = 20, 83.3%) and the latter arginine was replaced by lysine (R172K; n = 4, 16.7%). Our study was similar to previous studies which revealed that more than 80% of the
IDH2 mutations involved R140 [
15]. R172 mutations were profoundly associated with biological insights and clinical outcome [
15,
20] while R140 has not been addressed to associate with any prognostic significance in AML [
23]. Therefore, functional validation should be employed to define whether R140 plays a significant role in AML pathogenesis or is simply a genuine polymorphism.
IDH1 mutation was previously reported to be strongly associated with normal karyotype or intermediate risk karyotype AML [
5,
15,
25,
41]. Noticeably, our present study found that although
IDH1 mutation predominantly had normal karyotype (n = 11/20), various aberrant karyotype were also found (n = 8/20) including 5 cases of t(15;17). Similarly, although half of
IDH2-mutated cases had normal karyotype (n = 12/24), 6 cases had t(15;17). Our study showed a higher frequency of
IDH mutations in APL with t(15;17) (n = 11/36 cases, 31%) than most other APL series reported [
5,
18,
24,
27,
29,
32] (Table ). The prognostic significance of
IDH mutations in APL patients needs further studies.
| Table 6Reported frequencies of IDH1 and IDH2 mutations in APL patients worldwide |
To explore if other genetic mutations coexist in AML cases with
IDH mutations, we performed mutation analysis of various different genes, i.e.
FLT3,
NPM1,
NRAS and
AML1.
IDH1 mutations were found to be most frequently accompanied by
NPM1 mutations (74% of the cases;
P < 0.001). Previous studies also demonstrated that
IDH1 mutation was significantly associated with
NPM1 mutation, ranging from 12.5% to 67% as compared to the wild-type
IDH1 cases [
5,
18,
24,
25,
27,
41]. Similarly,
IDH2 mutations were significantly associated with
NPM1 mutations (60% of the cases;
P < 0.001) which were comparable to other reports [
24-
26]. No significant association was found with other molecular alterations including
FLT3-ITD,
FLT3-TKD,
NRAS and
AML1 although
FLT3-ITD was also frequently found co-existing with
IDH1 mutation in some studies [
15,
25]. Meanwhile, other authors also showed no significant correlation between either
IDH1 or
IDH2 mutation and
FLT3-TKD,
NRAS and
AML1 mutation [
5,
18,
24,
27,
30,
41].
With respect to clinical and hematologic parameters,
IDH1 mutated cases were frequently females rather than males (15 cases vs. 5 cases) which was similar to the German study by Schnittger
et al. [
27]. Interestingly, we observed that both
IDH1 and
IDH2 mutations were predominantly found in AML with maturation (AML-M2; n = 24/44) and acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) (AML-M3; n = 11/44) which were different from AML-M1 as reported by others [
5,
27,
30]. Interestingly, the frequency of
IDH2 mutation coexisting in AML-M4 of 25% in our study was comparable with 27% in the finding reported by Thol
et al. [
23].
IDH1 or
IDH2 mutations did not significantly impact survivals when the whole AML cohort or AML with normal karyotype analyzed (
P = 0.200 and 0.272). We therefore further analyzed OS according to age and
NPM1 status. Unfortunately, we could not find a significant difference between
IDH1- and
IDH2-mutated and wild-type cases (
P = 0.471 and .812) either in the younger age group (< 60 years) or the
NPM1-mutated genotype. Our study was consistent with some studies that revealed no impact of
IDH mutations on the OS of AML cases although other studies suggested that
IDH1 or
IDH2 mutations conferred an adverse effect among AML with normal karyotype or AML with favorable genotype (
NPM1 mutated/
FLT3 wild type) [
15,
25-
27,
41].
IDH1 mutation conferred a shorter disease-free survival and
IDH2 R172 mutation contributed to a lower complete remission or a higher relapse risk compared to wild-type
IDH patients [
25,
41]. Our study may be limited by a small number of cases with
IDH alterations and a substantial recruitment of cases with aberrant karyotype [
18,
23].
The possible oncogenic role of
IDH mutations that contribute to AML development has been postulated by available evidence [
20,
33,
34]. By structural and functional analysis,
IDH1 and
IDH2 mutated cells gained the neomorphic enzymatic activity creating a condition with 2HG oncometabolite accumulation which promotes tumorigenesis through inhibiting a cancer-associated transcription factor such as hypoxia-induced factor (HIF) [
19,
20,
34]. Moreover, inhibition of normal myeloid differentiation and induction of global DNA hypermethylation by mutated
IDH potentially lead to leukemogenesis [
33], suggesting that
IDH genes and their altered enzymatic pathways may be a potential new target for future drug development for AML patients. Intriguingly,
IDH1 and
IDH2 mutations were also found in other myeloid disorders such as myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) which have a propensity to AML development, although at a much lower frequency than AML [
42,
43]. It was thus speculated that
IDH mutations were likely to be associated with disease transformation or progression rather than disease initiation [
44-
46].
In conclusion, IDH1 and IDH2 mutations occur in a minor subset of newly diagnosed AML patients with a strong association with normal karyotype, AML-M2 subtype, and NPM1 mutation. No significant correlation with other mutations such as FLT3, RAS, and AML1 could be demonstrated. Larger studies are needed to confirm the prognostic impact of IDH1 and IDH2 mutations in AML patients from various ethnic backgrounds. Our results, nevertheless, provide a relevant rationale to utilize these genomic alterations to better characterize AML patients in the future.