Jumping translocations of 3q in acute promyelocytic leukemia.

Jumping translocation is a rare phenomenon, seldom reported to occur in cancer. A complex four-way translocation involving chromosomes 3, 9, 15, and 17 was identified in the chromosome study on a patient with a history of an acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). In the follow-up studies, the same complex rearrangement exhibited a jumping translocation between chromosomes 3 and 9 in one clone and 3 and 6 in another clone. This is the first reported case of jumping translocation in APL.