Submitted April 4, 2006
Accepted July 10, 2006
NUP214-ABL1 in adult T-ALL: the GMALL study group experience
Thomas Burmeister*, Nicola Gokbuget, Richard Reinhardt, Harald Rieder, Dieter Hoelzer, and Stefan Schwartz
Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat Frankfurt
Max Planck Institut fur Molekulare Genetik
Heinrich-Heine-Universitat Dusseldorf
* Corresponding author; email: thomas.burmeister{at}charite.de.
The NUP214-ABL1 fusion gene in T-ALL has recently been identified as a possible target for imatinib and related tyrosine kinase inhibitors but exact data regarding prognostic impact and frequency of the several putative NUP214-ABL1 mRNA transcripts are still missing. We have investigated 279 adult T-ALL patients treated within the framework of the GMALL 5/93 and 6/99 therapy trials for NUP214-ABL1 by using a novel multiplex real-time quantitative PCR. Eleven (3.9%) patients were NUP214-ABL1-positive and 5 different transcripts were observed; 8 patients had a thymic, 1 an early T- and 2 a mature T-immunophenotype. NUP214-ABL1-positive and -negative patients did not differ significantly in their major clinical features, and in contrast to previous reports suggesting an adverse clinical course of NUP214-ABL1-positive patients, no significant difference in overall survival was observed. Based on the results, we have established and tested a novel PCR method for simplified detection of the NUP214-ABL1 fusion gene.
