These results suggest that therapeutic targeting of HOXA9-dependent enhancer reorganization can be an effective therapeutic strategy in acute leukemia with HOXA9 overexpression.
In addition, we show that HOXA9 and MEIS1 overexpression are inversely correlated with relapse and overall survival, so the genes could become useful predictive markers of the clinical course of pediatric acute leukemias.
We also identified overexpression of HOXA9, a gene essential to myeloid differentiation that is expressed in PICALM-MLLT10 and MLL-rearranged acute leukemias.
Progression of CML to acute leukemia (blast crisis) in humans has been associated with acquisition of secondary chromosomal translocations, including the t(7;11)(p15;p15) resulting in the NUP98/HOXA9 fusion protein.