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SR Bauer, H Kubagawa, I Maclennan and F Melchers
Basel Institute for Immunology, Switzerland.
We show here that analysis of VpreB gene transcription can be a specific
way to identify acute leukemias of cells at very early stages of B-cell
development. Northern blot analysis of RNAs from 63 leukemia samples showed
that VpreB RNA was present in malignancies of precursor B cells, the
expression being a feature of both common acute lymphoblastic leukemia
(ALL) (CD10+) and null ALL (CD10-). It was absent from malignancies of
mature B cells (surface Ig positive), from acute leukemias of the T-cell
lineage and granulocyte-macrophage lineages, and from normal tonsil B and T
lymphocytes. Chronic myeloid leukemia blast crises of the B-precursor-cell
type expressed the VpreB gene while myeloid blast crises did not. VpreB RNA
was also expressed in the neoplastic cells of one of three patients with
acute undifferentiated leukemias. These data show that VpreB RNA expression
is a marker of the malignant forms of precursor B cells, and that it
appears at least as early as cytoplasmic CD22 and CD19 in tumors of the
B-cell lineage.
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| Copyright © 1991 by American Society of Hematology Online ISSN: 1528-0020 | |||||||||