Detection of p53 oncogene in acute-leukemia cells by immunoperoxidase technique

Expression of p53 oncogene in blast cells may have prognostic importance in acute leukemia. Simple and reliable methods which could detect enhanced p53 expression in leukemia cells would be important for follow-up studies of leukemia patients in remission. We used immunoperoxidase (IP) technique with an anti-p53 monoclonal antibody PAb421 to study the expression of p53 in leukemia cells. The expression of p53 was studied in 9 cell lines and 17 de novo acute leukemia (9 acute myeloid leukemia [AML], 8 acute lymphoblastic leukemia [ALL]) patients. The expression of p53 was demonstrated in non-T non-B cells and Burkitt's lymphoma cell lines, but neither in two myeloid leukemia cell lines nor in normal lymphoid cells after mitogenic stimulation. p53 expression was demonstrated in 7 cases (2 AML, 5 ALL) but only in ALL cases the percentage of positive of cells was over 20%. Bone marrow cells from patients were studied also after short-term culture (AML patients); in 1 case the number of PAb421-positive cells rose significantly after culture. These data suggest that IP staining with PAb421 can be used to demonstrate high p53 expression in B cell leukemias.