Homozygous MTS2 deletions were observed in 16 of 24 T-ALL cases and in 1 of 31 B-lineage ALLs (P < .001), all of them displaying homozygous MTS1 deletions.
A total of 22/31 children with ALL with methylated <i>CDKN2B</i> (71.0%) and 17/41 children with ALL with unmethylated <i>CDKN2B</i> (41.46%) exhibited increased telomerase activity (>15 TPG units).
In order to determine whether these genes are more widely involved in haematological malignancies, we have investigated a total of 84 samples that did not have homozygous p16 or p15 deletions from patients with acute lymphoid leukaemia (n=13), acute myeloid leukaemia (n=24) and chronic myeloid leukaemia in blast crisis (n=43) as well as four haemopoietic cell lines. p15 and p16 exon 1 and exon 2 were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), analysed by single-stranded conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and subsequently by sequencing.