The most common cancer in childhood is now curable in 90% of patients. Current efforts are focused on devising molecular-based therapy for the subsets of acute lymphoblastic leukemia that are most resistant to current therapy.

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Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Children

Structural chromosome rearrangements may result in the exchange of coding or regulatory DNA sequences between genes. Many such gene fusions are strong driver mutations in neoplasia and have provided fundamental insights into the disease mechanisms that are involved in tumorigenesis. The close association between the type of gene fusion and the tumour phenotype makes gene fusions ideal for diagnostic purposes, enabling the subclassification of otherwise seemingly identical disease entities. In addition, many gene fusions add important information for risk stratification, and increasing numbers of chimeric proteins encoded by the gene fusions serve as specific targets for treatment, resulting in dramatically improved patient outcomes. In this Timeline article, we describe the spectrum of gene fusions in cancer and how the methods to identify them have evolved, and also discuss conceptual implications of current, sequencing-based approaches for detection.

The emerging complexity of gene fusions in cancer

Chromosomal rearrangements of the human MLL/KMT2A gene are associated with infant, pediatric, adult and therapy-induced acute leukemias. Here we present the data obtained from 2345 acute leukemia patients. Genomic breakpoints within the MLL gene and the involved translocation partner genes (TPGs) were determined and 11 novel TPGs were identified. Thus, a total of 135 different MLL rearrangements have been identified so far, of which 94 TPGs are now characterized at the molecular level. In all, 35 out of these 94 TPGs occur recurrently, but only 9 specific gene fusions account for more than 90% of all illegitimate recombinations of the MLL gene. We observed an age-dependent breakpoint shift with breakpoints localizing within MLL intron 11 associated with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and younger patients, while breakpoints in MLL intron 9 predominate in AML or older patients. The molecular characterization of MLL breakpoints suggests different etiologies in the different age groups and allows the correlation of functional domains of the MLL gene with clinical outcome. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the MLL recombinome in acute leukemia and demonstrates that the establishment of patient-specific chromosomal fusion sites allows the design of specific PCR primers for minimal residual disease analyses for all patients.

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The MLL recombinome of acute leukemias in 2017

Infant acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with MLL rearrangements (MLL-R) represents a distinct leukemia with a poor prognosis. To define its mutational landscape, we performed whole-genome, exome, RNA and targeted DNA sequencing on 65 infants (47 MLL-R and 18 non-MLL-R cases) and 20 older children (MLL-R cases) with leukemia. Our data show that infant MLL-R ALL has one of the lowest frequencies of somatic mutations of any sequenced cancer, with the predominant leukemic clone carrying a mean of 1.3 non-silent mutations. Despite this paucity of mutations, we detected activating mutations in kinase-PI3K-RAS signaling pathway components in 47% of cases. Surprisingly, these mutations were often subclonal and were frequently lost at relapse. In contrast to infant cases, MLL-R leukemia in older children had more somatic mutations (mean of 6.5 mutations/case versus 1.3 mutations/case, P = 7.15 × 10(-5)) and had frequent mutations (45%) in epigenetic regulators, a category of genes that, with the exception of MLL, was rarely mutated in infant MLL-R ALL.

The landscape of somatic mutations in infant MLL-rearranged acute lymphoblastic leukemias.

Molecular landscape of acute myeloid leukemia in younger adults and its clinical relevance.

Chromosomal rearrangements of the human MLL (mixed lineage leukemia) gene are associated with high-risk infant, pediatric, adult and therapy-induced acute leukemias. We used long-distance inverse-polymerase chain reaction to characterize the chromosomal rearrangement of individual acute leukemia patients. We present data of the molecular characterization of 1590 MLL-rearranged biopsy samples obtained from acute leukemia patients. The precise localization of genomic breakpoints within the MLL gene and the involved translocation partner genes (TPGs) were determined and novel TPGs identified. All patients were classified according to their gender (852 females and 745 males), age at diagnosis (558 infant, 416 pediatric and 616 adult leukemia patients) and other clinical criteria. Combined data of our study and recently published data revealed a total of 121 different MLL rearrangements, of which 79 TPGs are now characterized at the molecular level. However, only seven rearrangements seem to be predominantly associated with illegitimate recombinations of the MLL gene (∼90%): AFF1/AF4, MLLT3/AF9, MLLT1/ENL, MLLT10/AF10, ELL, partial tandem duplications (MLL PTDs) and MLLT4/AF6, respectively. The MLL breakpoint distributions for all clinical relevant subtypes (gender, disease type, age at diagnosis, reciprocal, complex and therapy-induced translocations) are presented. Finally, we present the extending network of reciprocal MLL fusions deriving from complex rearrangements.

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H. O. Madsen

Papers

The MLL recombinome of acute leukemias in 2013