We report that fusion of TEL to AML1 is specifically observed in at least 16% of the childhood B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) investigated, none of which had been previously identified as harboring t(12;21).
These data show the coexistence of multiple genetic defects in childhood B-lineage ALL Cell lines with t(12;21) will facilitate the study of TEL-AML1 and AML1-TEL fusion proteins as well as TEL and CDKN2 gene inactivation in leukemia transformation and progression.
Using mainly reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), the TEL-AML1 chimeric transcript has been observed in 22-27% of pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), in particular in the early B-lineage ALL subtype, making it the most common genetic lesion in these patients.
More specific to ALL, t(12;21)(p13;q22), resulting in a fusion TEL-AML1, gene has recently been shown to be the most frequent translocation in childhood B-cell lineage ALL (20-30% of cases).
These findings indicate that absence of the TEL/AML1 fusion transcript partly correlates with the poorer outcome of adult B-cell lineage ALL as compared with childhood ALL and the TEL/AML1 fusion transcript is specific for pediatric B-cell lineage ALL.
Although deletion of ETV6 and t(12;21) were associated in most patients, in eight cases (six B lineage and two T-ALL) LOH was detected at the ETV6 locus without ETV6-AML1 hybrid RNA.
KOR-SA3544 expression over 3% was detected in the majority of TEL/AML1-negative patients with newly diagnosed common or preB ALL (19 of 31) and not in TEL/AML1-positive patients (0 of 18, P < 0.0001).
The t(12;21) is virtually undetectable by routine cytogenetics, but the chimeric transcript ETV6-AML1 has been detected in childhood ALL by molecular techniques in up to 36% of cases, making it the most common genetic abnormality in these patients.
In this study, we retrospectively examined the impact of TEL-AML1 status and ploidy on treatment outcome in a cohort of 75 children with standard risk ALL treated at our institution between 1983 and 1993 with SDI therapy.
The chromosomal translocation t(12;21) (p12;q22) which results in the TEL-AML1 fusion gene is the most frequent genetic rearrangement in childhood B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Microsatellite markers and fluorescence in situ hybridization identified deletions of the unrearranged TEL allele and IGH/TCR gene rearrangements were analyzed; the results show that posttreatment relapse cells in 2 patients with TEL-AML1-positive ALL were not derived from the dominant clone present at diagnosis but were from a sibling clone.
Our findings confirm that additional or secondary genetic changes including AML1 amplification are commonly encountered in childhood ALL with TEL/AML1 gene fusion, which are envisaged to play significant roles in disease progression.
To identify new partner breakpoints for ETV6 and CBFA2, we selected 30 patients with childhood ALL in whose leukemic cells a t(12;21) had been detected by RT-PCR.
Two supervised methods of analysis were used to identify the 20 best discriminating genes between the following cohorts: acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) versus acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL); B-lineage versus T-lineage ALL; newly diagnosed B-lineage standard-risk versus high-risk ALL; and B-lineage leukemia harboring the TEL-AML 1 fusion versus patients without a molecularly characterized translocation.
The (12;21) translocation resulting in TEL/AML1 gene fusion is present in about 25% of childhood precursor B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and is associated with a good prognosis and a high cellular sensitivity to L-asparaginase (L-Asp).
This study identifies multiple copies of the AML1 gene on a duplicated chromosome 21, dup(21), as a recurrent abnormality in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Previous studies on concordant acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in identical twins have identified the leukemia as monoclonal with MLL or ETV6-RUNX1 gene fusion as early or initiating events in utero.