Activation and suppression of the TRAIL death-receptor pathway in chemotherapy sensitive and resistant follicular lymphoma cells

Aberrant expression of the apoptosis inhibitor bcl-2 provides a survival advantage throughout oncogenesis and can facilitate chemotherapeutic resistance in a variety of human cancers. Follicular lymphoma (FL) for example, is characterized by the chromosomal translocation t(14; 18), which results in bcl-2 overexpression and initiates lymphomagenesis. Although FL. cells possess ample amounts of bcl-2, they respond remarkably well to standard first-round chemotherapy. However, the vast majority of patients relapses and becomes progressively resistant to therapy. We obtained cell lines derived from chemosensitive and chemoresistant FL patients, that are characterized by the chromosomal translocation t(14; 18) and expression of bcl-2, to investigate how chemotherapeutic drugs can circumvent bcl-2 anti-apoptotic function and to identify alterations in those pathways that may facilitate resistance to DNA damaging drugs. In chemosensitive FL. cells, we found that DNA damaging drugs promote apoptosis through p53-dependent upregulation of the TRAIL-DR5 receptor, resulting in activation of caspase-8 and downstream executioner caspases-thereby evading bcl-2 mediated suppression of apoptosis. Examination of drug resistant FL. cell lines revealed that at least two defects in this pathway can contribute to chemotherapeutic resistance: 1. p53 gene mutations that disable the transcriptional response to DNA damaging drugs, including expression of the TRAIL-DR5 receptor, and 2. transcriptional repression of the cell-death executioner enzyme caspase-3.