[Characteristics of fusion gene and immunophenotype in MLL gene rearrangement positive childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia].

The study was aimed to investigate the fusion gene transcript and immunophenotypic characteristics of the mixed linage leukemia (MLL)-rearranged positive childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The incidence of MLL rearrangement in 601 cases of ALL patients was detected by the multiple-nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR); the subtypes and features of the fusion gene transcript were analyzed by PCR products sequencing; the immunophenotypic characteristics at diagnosis were compared between the 22 MLL rearrangement positive of ALL patient, 30 negative control which selected randomly from the patients whose fusion gene could not be detected in the same term and 43 pro-B-ALL patients. The results showed that the incidence of MLL positive ALL was 3.66%, constituted 29.9% of the pro-B-ALL. The MLL rearrangement positive 20 B-ALL patients were all CD10 negative; the number of patients who carried CD13, CD33 and CD34 was lower than that of pro-B-ALL who had no fusion gene, whereas the expression of CD20, CD22, CD2, CD5, CD7 showed no difference. 4 kind partner genes of MLL-AF4, AF9, AF10 and ENL were detected. The fusion loci of MLL gene were mainly located at the exon 6, 7, 8 and many kind of fusion loci of MLL may exist in one patient; whereas its partner gene fusion loci were relatively single. A transcript contains a random insert sequence existed in a transcript of one MLL-AF10+ patient. It is concluded that though incidence of MLL rearrangement is low, but it has a variety of fusion transcripts, the ALL patients has unique biological characteristics at immunophenotype and fusion transcript.