Faulty adaptor linked to leukemia
Loss of the adaptor protein SLP-65 is a primary cause of childhood pre-B leukemia
May 21, 2003
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the commonest form of childhood cancer and results from clonal proliferation of transformed hemopoietic cells, caused by genetic alterations. Most cases arise from B-cell clones arrested at the pre–B-cell stage of differentiation, but the molecular events involved have been unclear. In the May 22
Jumaa et al. used retroviral vectors and expressed a green fluorescent–SLP-65 fusion protein in SLP-65-/- pre–B-cell lines. They observed that reconstitution of the SLP-65 expression in these cells enhanced differentiation in vitro and prevented the development of pre–B-cell leukemia when the cells were injected into immune-deficient mice. In addition, they showed that 16 of the 34 childhood pre-B ALL samples tested had a...