[Gene expression in white blood cells in chronic myeloid leukemia]

The new technologies that have the DNA laboratory over recent years and the general progress in knowledge of the human genome, have allowed the simultaneous observation of the activity of a large number of genes. Chronic myeloid leukemia is characterized with abnormal tyrosine kinase activity of the fused bcr/abl gene, which is most often product of translocation between chromosomes 9 an 22. It is as yet unknown whether this is the only and sufficient cause of the disease, or whether other supporting and co-active abnormalities exist. It is also not yet clear whether an increase of proliferating activity or reduced programmed cell death plays the dominant role. The aim of this study was to make further steps in resolving the question as to which of these hypotheses fits better.

Membrane macroarrays (Clontech 7742-1: Human Cancer cDNA Expression Array with 588 gene probes) were used throughout the study, on which cDNA reverse-transcribed from total RNA in turn isolated from peripheral white blood cells and labelled with 32P was hybridized. Cells obtained from 5 patients with confirmed diagnoses by cytogenetic and molecular (bcr/abl) analyses, but who had not yet been treated by chemotherapy, were the source of the material. In some cases mononuclears and granulocytes were also isolated by Ficoll-Paque centrifugation. Radioactivity was detected by autoradiography or by a Phosphorimager (Fujifilm FLA-2000). Comparison with normal gene expression (healthy donor) was made by subtraction using Clontech AtlaImage 1.5 software. Although changes of expression of identical genes were not observed in all of patients examined, the majority of them were concordant. Values at least double those of the controls applied to the activity of c-jun N-terminal kinase, MMP-8, MMP-9, integrin alpha E, integrin beta and PDGF, whereas the expression of ZAP-70, IRF1, MCL-1, STAT 5B, RARA, CDC25B, RPSA, TNFR decreased. Increases of PCNA, MMP-17, CD59, rho G, CRAF1 and PIG7 or decreases of notch, caspase 8, caspase 4, interleukin 6 receptor, rho B and TIMP1 were observed only in some cell samples.

It seems that some maturation processes and transmembrane signalling are blocked, as well as the effectors of apoptosis. On the other hand, the reduced activity of ZAP-70, IRF1 and MCL-1 also indicated that proliferation breaks were weakened. The involvement of both processes-released replication and ineffective apoptosis--was evident; the problem of bcr/abl gene fusion being the necessary first and sufficient step on the way towards developing chronic myeloid leukemia, however, remained unresolved.