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Y Hayashi, SC Raimondi, FG Behm, VM Santana, DK Kalwinsky, CH Pui, J Mirro and DL Williams
Department of Pathology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
38101.
Leukemic blast cells are thought to arise from clonal expansion of a single
transformed hematopoietic cell. This generality is supported by the rarity
of convincing reports on acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) with two
karyotypically independent clones. Relying on sequential cytogenetic
analyses, we identified such clones in two children with relapsed AML. The
first case, classified as M2 leukemia in the French- American-British (FAB)
classification system, had a t(8;21) (q22;q22) at diagnosis; 16 months
later, at relapse, the leukemic cells had uniform morphologic features
similar to those observed at diagnosis, except that two independent clones
were present: one with the original t(8;21) and the other with
t(11;22)(q23;q13) [corrected]). The second case was initially classified as
FAB M1 leukemia with a t(8;21) (q22;q22). At relapse, 16 months later, the
blast cells appeared morphologically uniform and similar to the diagnostic
specimen; however, in addition to the original t(8;21) clone, there was a
t(1;11) (p32;q23) [corrected]. These findings suggest that separate
leukemogenic events affecting different progenitor cells can occur in rare
cases of AML. The presence of two karyotypically independent clones could
also be explained by multistep leukemogenesis; that is, more than one cell
from a common pool of preleukemic cells could be affected by the
transforming event, resulting in two independent clones. Alternatively, in
light of recent reports of therapy-related leukemias with an 11q23
translocation, the new independent clone in these two patients could
represent a therapy-related secondary malignancy. Thus, 11q23
translocations may occur preferentially in stem cells that are more
susceptible to treatment-induced malignant transformation.
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| Copyright © 1989 by American Society of Hematology Online ISSN: 1528-0020 | |||||||||