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    Identify new regulators of TNFR1-induced necroptotic pathway
    Wu, Bolong ( 2019)
    Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) is a vastly heterogeneous blood disorder with a poor prognosis for patients older than 65. Our group has been focused on developing new treatments for AML to replace the standard intensive chemotherapy. Previous data showed that the SMAC-mimetic birinapant in combination with the caspase inhibitor IDN could kill different types of AML both in vitro and in vivo through activation of necroptosis cell death pathway. However, over 50% of the patient samples tested in study showed resistance to necroptosis. This project aims to determine the molecular mechanisms that mediate necroptosis resistance in AML and identify new regulators of necroptotic pathway. The results obtained in this study will expand the knowledge of necroptosis signalling in leukaemia and will contribute to the optimal clinical use of birinapant/IDN drug combination. This project contains 2 parts; (1) We will use human AML cell lines that are resistant to necroptosis to determine the molecular changes involved in cell death resistance. (2) We will use CRISPR/Cas9 knock out screen in human AML cell lines that are sensitive to necroptosis, trying to identify new regulators of TNFR1-induced necroptotic pathway. Together these experimental approaches will allow a better understanding of the regulation of TNF-necroptosis signalling in AML. By overexpression wild-type RIPK3 in the KG-1 cell line, we successfully sensitised KG- 1 cells to necroptosis, which indicates that the KG-1 endogenous RIPK3 is dysfunctional. By cDNA sequence of KG-1 endogenous RIPK3, we detected several mutant base pairs, which may lead to the dysfunction, but this result needs further prove by genome sequence, which is undergoing. By CRISPR knock out screen, we found several targets that may lead to the necroptotic resistant, and MAGE3 is the most research-worthy one. Knockout MAGEB3 in the MV4;11 cell line led to the downregulation of RIPK3 and the necroptotic resistance. However, this result could not be repeated on the U937 cell line, and the mechanism of how MAGEB3 regulates RIPK3 is still unclear. Further research will be done on MAGEB3 to have a better understanding of the role of MAGEB3 in the necroptotic pathway. Together, all these results gave a better understanding of the necroptotic pathway and may contribute to the treatment of AML.