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K Schaefer-Rego, H Dudek, D Popenoe, Z Arlin, JG Mears, A Bank and D Leibowitz
Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is associated with the Philadelphia (Ph)
chromosome, which results from a reciprocal translocation between
chromosomes 9 and 22. This activates the abl oncogene by moving it from
chromosome 9 and combining it with sequence located on chromosome 22. The
new fusion gene, with chromosome 22 sequence at its 5' end and chromosome
9-abl sequence at its 3' end, generates a new messenger RNA (mRNA) and
protein that are implicated in the pathogenesis of CML. The breakpoint near
the c-abl locus on chromosome 9 can occur within a large area. In contrast,
the breakpoints on chromosome 22 are concentrated within a 6 kilobase (kb)
region termed the breakpoint cluster region (bcr). This study was designed
to determine whether chronic-phase and blast crisis patients had
identifiable differences in the structure of their Ph chromosomes.
Restriction mapping of the chromosome 22 translocation breakpoints
performed for 26 patients showed that the breakpoints of eight of the nine
patients in blast crisis were in the 3' portion of the bcr, whereas the
breakpoints in the 17 patients in the chronic phase were clustered in the
5' portion of the bcr. This suggests a strong correlation between a 3' bcr
breakpoint and blast crisis in CML.
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| Copyright © 1987 by American Society of Hematology Online ISSN: 1528-0020 | |||||||||