Point mutations in the granulocyte colony-stimulating factor receptor (G-CSFR) gene have been linked to the development of secondary leukemia in patients with congenital neutropenia (CN).
Because exposure to natural or medicinal substances blocking topo II during pregnancy have been proposed as etiological agents for infant leukemia, we have compared the distribution of ALL1 gene breakpoints in infant leukemias with an altered ALL1 gene configuration to those in secondary leukemia associated with prior exposure to topo II targeting drugs and in reference to the major topo consensus binding site in exon 9.
These results indicate that patients with RAEB and RAEBt, with high expression of the c-mpl, CD34, and GPIIb genes, may identify a subgroup of patients with particularly poor prognosis, due to an increased risk of secondary leukemia.
We examined clinical, morphologic, and cytogenetic features and ALL-1 (MLL, Htrxl, HRX) gene rearrangements in 17 cases of secondary leukemia that occurred 11 months to 9 years from diagnoses of primary cancers in children who received topoisomerase II inhibitors or developed secondary leukemias typical of those associated with this therapy.
To evaluate the clinical relevance of multidrug resistance (MDR) phenotype, the intracellular daunorubicin accumulation (IDA) and P-glycoprotein (P-gp) expression were investigated in 87 adult patients with acute leukemia: 69 patients with de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML), 10 with AML at relapse, and eight with secondary leukemia to myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS-AML).
Here we report that the MLL/11q23 breakpoints in 13/13 patients with secondary leukemia map to the same breakpoint cluster region (bcr) noted in de novo MLL/11q23 acute leukemias and the presence of in vivo topoisomerase II inhibitor-induced cleavage sites in MLL/11q23 bcr.
Two precursor B-ALLs showed completely different Ig and TcR gene rearrangement patterns at relapse, suggesting the absence of a clonal relation between the leukemic cells at diagnosis and relapse and the development of a secondary leukemia.