Childhood cancer etiology: Recent reports

✍ Scribed by Ross, Julie A.; Davies, Stella M.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 48 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0098-1532
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-911x(199908)33:2<106::aid-mpo8>3.0.co;2-7

✦ Synopsis

In 1993, Ford et al. [Nature 363:358-360, 1993]

examined three sets of infant twins concordant for leukemia and found that all twin pairs shared identical MLL gene involvement in their leukemia cells, but they were distinctly different MLL abnormalities across the three pairs. The authors concluded that the leukemia likely arose in one twin and passed to the other through placental circulation. However, direct evidence of an in utero origin could only be confirmed by detection of MLL abnormalities in fetal or newborn blood samples of infants who subsequently developed leukemia. Using long-range PCR, Gale et al. [Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 94:13950-13954, 1997] identified MLL fusion transcripts in neonatal heel stick cards that were obtained retrospectively from three infants who subsequently developed leukemia at the age of 5 months to 2 years. These MLL-AF4 fusion transcripts were identical to those amplified from the leukemia cells and provides conclusive evidence that the "preinitiation" of the leukemia happened in utero.