Resistance to apoptosis in CTLL-2 cells overexpressing B-Myb is associated with B-Myb-dependent bcl-2 induction

Transcriptional regulators of the Myb family play important roles in cell proliferation, differentiation, and survival. To investigate the role of Myb proteins in the regulation of apoptosis, we studied the apoptotic response of interleukin 2-dependent CTLL-2 cells stably transfected with B-Myb. B-Myb-overexpressing cells showed a diminished cytokine dependence and were resistant to apoptosis induced by doxorubicin, ceramide, and dexamethasone, Overexpression of B-Myb was associated with enhanced expression of bcl-2, which was dependent, at least in part, on increased transcription. In transient transfection assays in T-lymphoblastic cells, B-Myb was able to stimulate the promoter activity of the bcl-2 5' flanking region linked to the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase reporter gene. A segment of the bcl-2 promoter (nucleotides +34 to +58 relative to the transcription initiation site) contained a putative Myb-binding site and was shown to specifically interact with B-Myb and to confer B-Myb responsiveness to a bcl-2/chloramphenicol acetyltransferase reporter construct. These results indicate that B-Myb promotes T cells survival by enhancing the expression of bcl-2 and identify bcl-2 as a B-Myb target gene regulated in a DNA binding-dependent manner.