Philadelphia-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia with multiple subclones including duplication of the Philadelphia chromosome and Abelson oncogene.

Journal: Cancer Genetics And Cytogenetics
Published:
Abstract

A case of Philadelphia (Ph)-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with multiple subclones including duplication of the BCR-ABL1 fusion gene and of the Abelson oncogene (ABL1) is reported. Cytogenetically, two different rearrangements of chromosome 9 not involved in the t(9;22) were found in two subclones. In one subclone the normal 9 was lost and replaced by an acrocentric marker, which contained an additional copy of the BCR-ABL1 fusion gene. Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction detected the fusion transcripts p210 (e13a2 junction) and p190 (e1a2 junction), whereas fluorescence in situ hybridization showed the major BCR-ABL1 junction in both Ph chromosomes, strongly suggesting that the presence of the p210 and p190 proteins in this case was due to mechanisms of alternative or mis-splicing at the transcriptional level. The second subclone showed the classic t(9;22) plus an add(9)(p24) containing two copies of the ABL1 gene. Other molecular events involving chromosome 9 were a monoallelic loss of JAK2 in both subclones and an additional loss of P15/P16 in the subclone with the acrocentric marker bearing the extra Ph chromosome.

Authors
Roberta La Starza, Antonella Vitale, Anna Serra, Giuseppe Saglio, Giuseppe Fioritoni, Daniela Falzetti, Massimo Martelli, Robin Foà, Cristina Mecucci