There is no systematic screening of myeloproliferative neoplasms; however, the number of ETV6-ABL1-positive cases and the relative incidence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia and myeloproliferative neoplasms suggest that in adulthood ETV6-ABL1 is more common in BCR-ABL1-negative chronic myeloid leukemia-like myeloproliferations than in acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Therapeutically validated oncoproteins in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) include BCR-ABL in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) and a spectrum of PDGFRA/B mutant proteins that are products of intra- (eg, FIP1L1-PDGFRA) or interchromosomal (eg, ETV6-PDGFRB) gene fusions.
Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction detected the TEL/EVI1 transcript without the intervening 5' non-coding exon of EVI1, suggesting that inappropriate expression of the EVI1 protein driven by the TEL promotor could play a critical role in progression to the blast crisis of CML.
Several patients with clinical features of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) have fusion of the TEL (ETV6) gene on 12p13 with ABL on 9q34 and express a chimeric Tel-Abl protein that contains the same portion of the Abl tyrosine kinase fused to Tel, an Ets family transcription factor, rather than Bcr.
Using fluorescence in situ hybridization we characterized seven new ETV6 rearrangements in chronic myeloid leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Twenty-nine such cell lines established from children (n = 13) or adults (n = 13) with early B-lineage ALL and five cell lines derived from chronic myeloid leukemia in blast crisis or B cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma were investigated for the occurrence of the TEL-AML1 rearrangement by RT-PCR.
We show here that a t(9;12)(p24;p13) in a case of early pre-B acute lymphoid leukemia and a t(9;15;12)(p24;q15;p13) in atypical chronic myelogenous leukemia in transformation involve the ETV6 gene at 12p13 and the JAK2 gene at 9p24.
We examined 42 adult patients with B-cell lineage ALL and 13 adult patients with lymphoblastic transformation of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) to detect TEL/AML1 fusion genes using the reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Southern blotting, but no translocation was detected.
We have used RT-PCR, followed by Southern blotting and direct sequencing, to establish the incidence of TEL-AML1 rearrangement in 131 adults with acute leukaemia (101 with ALL and 30 with chronic myeloid leukaemia in blastic crisis).