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Blood, 1 April 2008, Vol. 111, No. 7, pp. 3849-3858. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on February 1, 2008; DOI 10.1182/blood-2007-08-109942.
Submitted August 31, 2007
Department of Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States * Corresponding author; email: donsmall{at}jhmi.edu.
Constitutive activation of FLT3 by internal tandem duplication (ITD) mutations is one of the most common molecular alterations known in AML. To investigate the role FLT3/ITD mutations play in the development of leukemia, we generated a FLT3/ITD knock-in mouse model by inserting an ITD mutation into the juxtamembrane domain of murine FLT3. FLT3wt/ITD mice developed myeloproliferative disease, characterized by splenomegaly, leukocytosis, and myeloid hypercellularity, which progressed to mortality by 6-20 months. BM and spleen from FLT3wt/ITD mice had an increased fraction of granulocytes/monocytes and dendritic cells, and a decreased fraction of B lymphocytes. No sign of acute leukemia was observed over the lifetime of these mice. BM from FLT3wt/ITD mice showed enhanced potential to generate myeloid colonies in vitro. BM from FLT3wt/ITD mice also produced more spleen colonies in the in vivo spleen-CFU assay. In the long-term competitive repopulation assay, BM cells from FLT3wt/ITD mice outgrew the wild-type competitor cells and showed increased myeloid and reduced lymphoid expansion activity. In summary, our data indicate that expression of FLT3/ITD mutations alone is capable of conferring normal HSPCs with enhanced myeloid expansion. It also appears to suppress B lymphoid maturation. Additional cooperative events appear to be required to progress to acute leukemia.
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