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The Mechanism of Hematopoietic Progenitor Cell immortalization by MLL-ENL
Sarah J. Horton and Owen Williams
volume 5 | issue 4
15 february 2006Pages: 360 - 362
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The t(11;19) translocation gives rise to the MLL-ENL fusion protein and is frequently found in infant myeloid and lymphoid leukemias. Immortalized myeloid cell lines can be generated by expression of MLL-ENL in murine hematopoietic progenitors. By establishing myeloid cell lines with conditional expression of MLL-ENL, we recently demonstrated that MLL-ENL is necessary to maintain immortalization and sustain the expression of a characteristic pattern of Hox genes. The cell lines can be induced to undergo terminal differentiation by inhibition of MLL-ENL expression or by treatment with G-CSF. Expression of Hoxa genes is reduced in cells differentiating as a result of MLL-ENL loss, but is maintained in G-CSF treated cells. Thus, although aberrant maintenance of Hoxa gene expression may play an important role in MLL-ENL induced leukemia, the contribution of this pathway to immortalization is critically dependent on the cytokine environment of the immortalized myeloid cells.
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDF If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.