7023 Background: MPAL is a rare subgroup of acute leukemia characterized by both myeloid and lymphoid phenotypes. Genetic basis of MPAL is not well understood. Methods: We studied 31 patients (pts) with MPAL (median age 53) that met 2008 WHO criteria. Bone marrow samples were studied by targeted capture sequencing of 295 genes (median 393x), RNA sequencing, and Infinium methylation EPIC array (Illumina). Mutational landscape was compared to 194 AML, 71 B-ALL, and 6 T-ALL cases. Promoter methylation pattern was compared to the data from 194 AML (TCGA), 505 B-ALL and 101 T-ALL cases (Nordlund et al. Genome Biology. 2013). Results: Eighteen (58%) pts had myeloid-T and 13 (42%) had myeloid-B phenotype. Four pts had t(9;22), 1 had 11q23 rarrangement, and 8 had complex karyotype. MPAL had similar number of mutations with AML but had higher number of mutations than B-ALL or T-ALL. Both AML-type and ALL-type mutations were detected in MPAL, supporting the mixed phenotypic features. However, NPM1, CEBPA and GATA2 mutations were specific to AML and were not found in MPAL. Myeloid-T and myeloid-B showed distinct patterns of mutations, in which DNMT3A, IDH2, NOTCH1, IL7R, and FBXW7 mutations were enriched in myeloid-T whereas RUNX1 mutations were enriched in myeloid-B. Myeloid-T and myeloid-B also showed distinct patterns of promoter methylation. Overall, myeloid-T had more hypermethylated CpG loci than myeloid-B. Genes that have essential role in T-cell receptor (TCR) pathway ( CD3D, CD7, CD247, LCK, PRKCQ, CCR9, and TCL1A) were differentially methylated and differentially expressed between myeloid-T and myeloid-B. RNA sequencing revealed several known translocations such as, NSD1-NUP98, and KMT2A-MLLT4, in addition to the novel fusion proteins such as FOXP1-DNAJC15, RUNX1-NAP1L1, and BCL2-TM9SF3. Unbiased hierarchical clustering of MPAL, AML, B-ALL and T-ALL by promoter methylation revealed that myeloid-T had consistent similarity with T-ALL, while myeloid-B showed random similarity with either B-ALL or AML. Conclusions: MPAL is genetically heterogeneous and myeloid-T and myeloid-B shows distinct patterns of mutations, methylation and gene expressions. Therapy for MPAL may need to be tailored based on the genetic profiles.
The novel Akt inhibitor, perifosine, induces caspase-dependent apoptosis and downregulates P-glycoprotein expression in multidrug-resistant human T-acute leukemia cells by a JNK-dependent mechanism
