A total of 59 patients with CLL and 59 controls were examined for the frequency of an XbaI restriction fragment length polymorphism RFLP of the ETS-1 oncogene which has been reported to occur more frequently in patients with hematological malignancies than in normal controls.
Our findings suggest that the coexistence of JH and TcR gene rearrangements, frequently detected in acute leukemia, may also be observed in hematologic malignancies derived from more differentiated cells.
Molecular consequences of this mutation point to a possible pathogenic involvement of ETS-1 in these disorders and to the question of genetic susceptibility to hematological malignancies.
Indirect immunofluorescence staining with monoclonal antibody (MoAb) CL203.4 of malignant cells from 269 patients with hematologic malignancies showed a heterogeneous expression of CD54/intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1).
These results indicate that RAS mutations, especially those involving exon 1 of the N-RAS gene, are frequent only in a subset of hematologic malignancies.
This is the fourth type of Bcr/Abl junction so far identified in Ph1-positive hematologic malignancies and is a consequence of an unusual breakpoint position on chromosome 22 that falls approximately 20 kb downstream of the major breakpoint cluster region (bcr) of the Bcr gene.
Since P190 is almost always associated in man with acute forms of hematological malignancies, this suggests that other factors may play a role in determining the phenotype of the disease.