Altered expression and functional role of ion channels in leukemia: bench to bedside

Abstract

Leukemic cells' (LCs) survival, proliferation, activation, differentiation, and invasiveness/migration can be mediated through the function of cation and anion channels that are involved in volume regulation, polarization, cytoskeleton, and extracellular matrix reorganization. This study will review the expression of ion channels in LCs and their possible function in leukemia progression. We searched relevant literature by a PubMed (2002-2019) of English-language literature using the terms "ion channels", "leukemia", "proliferation", "differentiation", "apoptosis", and "migration". Altered expression and dysfunction of ion channels can have a strong impact on hematopoietic cell and LCs physiology and signaling, which contributes to the vital processes such as proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. Indeed, it can be stated that changing expression of ion channels can affect the onset and progression as well as clinical features and therapeutic responses of leukemia via inducing the maintenance of LCs. Since ion channels are membrane proteins, they can be easily accessible in LCs for understanding their influence on leukemia progression. On the other hand, ion channels can be new potential targets for chemotherapeutic agents, which may open a novel clinical and pharmaceutical field in leukemia therapy.