High frequency of BTG1 deletions in patients with BCR-ABL1-positive acute leukemia

Deletions affecting the B-cell translocation gene 1 (BTG1) have recently been reported in 9% of patients with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (BCP-ALL), and occur even more frequently in ETV6-RUNX1-positive and BCR-ABL1-positive subgroups. To investigate whether the BTG1 deletions occur in other BCR-ABL1-positive acute leukemias besides BCP-ALL, we analyzed 44 leukemia cases harboring the BCR-ABL1 transcript [32 BCP-ALL, six mixed-phenotype acute leukemia (MPAL), and six chronic myeloid leukemia in B-lineage blast crisis (CML-BC)] by array-based comparative genomic hybridization and reverse transcription-PCR. BTG1 deletions were present in 31.8% of BCR-ABL1-positive acute leukemia patients, including 31.3% of BCP-ALL (10/32), 33.3% of MPAL (2/6), and 33.3% of CML-BC (B-lineage) (2/6) patients. Of note, the intragenic deletion breakpoints, mapping to 5 different positions at the proximal end of the breakpoint, clustered tightly within exon 2 of BTG1, which were located within a stretch of 20 bp from nucleotide 284 to nucleotide 304 and led to truncated BTG1 transcripts. There were no significant differences in the median white blood cell count, hemoglobin concentration, platelet count, bone marrow blast count, sex, age, or overall complete remission rate between patients with and without BTG1 deletions. Taken together, our data suggest that BTG1 deletions might play a role in leukemogenesis of BCP-ALL as well as of BCR-ABL1-positive MPAL and CML-BC (B-lineage).