Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most common malignancy in childhood. High-resolution allelotyping performed in our laboratory showed new chromosomal sites of nonrandom deletions. We have focused our work on 8q12 deletions, which we have found in about 4% of patients (eight of 205 informative cases). These deletions were of small size (less than 1 Mb) in all but one patient, and the deleted region common to all patients was delineated between two microsatellite markers (D8S1113 and D8S1763). This region was sequenced entirely from two overlapping bacterial artificial chromosomes. The common deleted region (120 kb) had a low GC content (37%), was composed more than 50% of LINE sequences, and contained only two candidate genes. The centromeric deletion borders were clustered within an interval of 33 kb between two microsatellite markers. This interval contains the first exon of an HMG-1-related gene (KIAA0808) and a putative gene, DL8q12, predicted to encode a protein with 231 amino acid residues with no homolog in protein databases. Analysis of the available mRNA from lymphoblastic cells of two patients with 8q12 deletions using common polymorphisms in the 3' UTR of KIAA0808 showed monoallelic expression of this gene. Identification of a biallelic polymorphism in the first exon of DL8q12 showed that this gene was deleted in two of four informative cases. Sequencing of the exons of both genes from all patients with 8q12 deletions did not show any mutation, which suggests that neither of these genes behaves as a classic tumor suppressor gene.
The long arm of chromosome 20 displays recurrent loss of heterozygosity (LOH) for microsatellite markers in blast cells from children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. To further characterize the region of deletion and to precisely establish its frequency, we searched for LOH in 103 children with ALL using polymorphic markers in the previously described region of interest, namely between D20S101 and D20S887. LOH was detected in nine patients (ie with a frequency of 8.7%). Interestingly, in one patient, a small deletion was found, flanked proximally by D20S850 and distally by M201, a dinucleotide repeat identified from chromosome 20 sequences. The distance between these two markers is approximately 1000 kb. The occurrence of non-random deletions of the long arm of chromosome 20 has previously been observed in myeloid malignancies (myeloproliferative disorders and myelodysplastic syndromes) in 5-10% of patients. The small deletion in our patient is located within the common region of deletion of myeloproliferative disorders suggesting that a tumor suppressor gene may be the common target of the deletions in various types of hematological malignancies.
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