Aggressive leukemia driven by MLL-AF9

Vaia Stavropoulou; Antoine H F M Peters; Juerg Schwaller

doi:10.1080/23723556.2016.1241854

Aggressive leukemia driven by MLL-AF9

Mol Cell Oncol. 2017 Oct 23;5(3):e1241854. doi: 10.1080/23723556.2016.1241854. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Vaia Stavropoulou¹, Antoine H F M Peters^{2

3}, Juerg Schwaller¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedicine and Children's Hospital (UKBB), University of Basel, Switzerland.
² Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), Basel, Switzerland.
³ Faculty of Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland.

Abstract

We recently showed that cellular origin impacts the aggressiveness and the phenotype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Direct induction of the MLL-AF9 fusion in various hematopoietic compartments in vivo using a doxycycline (DOX) regulated mouse model (iMLL-AF9) led to an invasive chemoresistant AML expressing several genes known to be involved in epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) in solid cancers. Many of these genes play important roles in migration and invasion and are significantly associated with poor overall survival in AML patients.

Keywords: AML; EMT; Evi1; LT-HSC; MLL-AF9.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF-31003A_130661 and 31003A_149714/1), Swiss Cancer League (OCS-2357-02-2009, OCS-02778-02-2011, KFS-3019-08-2012), Wilhelm Sander Foundation (Munich), Swiss Bridge Foundation, the Gertrude Von Meissner Foundation Basel, Novartis Research Foundation, SystemsX.ch (Cell plasticity) and EMBO YIP program.