These observations suggest that the p53 gene alteration may play an important role in lymphomagenesis and/or disease progression in some types of B-cell lymphoma.
In order to evaluate the role of p53 mutations in the multistep process of leukemogenesis we studied 61 patients with myelodysplastic syndromes using single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis of polymerase chain reaction products as well as direct sequencing.
Relevant strains of genetically engineered mice, including bcl-2-Ig and E mu-myc transgenic mice and p53 knockout mice, have been used to prospectively examine the regulation of apoptotic cell death by these genes, individually and in combination, and their contribution to in vivo lymphomagenesis.
The high frequency of p53 mutation in NHL B cell lines and the relatively low frequency of p53 mutations in fresh lymphoma tissue suggests that p53 gene alteration may play a role in lymphomagenesis and/or disease progression in a subset of B cell lymphomas and that the p53 mutation conveys a proliferative advantage on lymphoma cells that permits their in vitro growth.
Our results confirm the relatively low incidence of p53 mutations in AML and further support the evidence that p53 plays a role in leukemogenesis through a recessive mechanism (two-hit model) of inactivation of tumor suppressor activity.
The genetic mechanisms underlying FA-associated leukemogenesis appear to be independent of N-ras and p53 mutations, which are relatively frequent events in myeloid tumors associated with other hematologic disorders.
The genetic mechanisms underlying the genesis of low-grade mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphomas and their transformation into high-grade lymphoma are poorly understood. p53 inactivation, commonly caused by mutation and allele loss, has been shown to play an important role in the early development and/or the late disease progression of many human tumors including lymphoid malignancies and, thus, may also be important in MALT lymphomagenesis.
Collectively, these results show that mutations of p53 gene in BLV-infected cattle with lymphosarcoma can potentially alter its physiological function and may play an important role in BLV-induced leukemogenesis.
These results suggest that HPV16E6 could stimulate p53 protein degradation in mouse cells and induced the lymphomagenesis in a manner indistinguishable from p53 deficiency.
We conclude that, (1) p53 mutations are infrequent at diagnosis but tend to be associated with poor clinical outcome; (2) RAS and p21 mutations may not be involved in the pathogenesis of T-ALL; (3) not only frequent alterations of p16 and p15 genes but also methylation of p16 gene are involved in initiating the leukemogenesis of T-ALLs, and (4) these 5 genes are independently involved in T-ALL.
Although the precise role of the p53 point mutation in leukemogenesis remains to be clarified, the establishment of an NK leukemia cell line with a p53 point mutation could be valuable in the study of leukemogenesis.