Genome-Wide Micro-Deletions and Amplifications Acquired at Relapse in Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

Abstract 166

Recurrence of acute myeloid leukemia AML has a poor prognosis with only 20% of adults surviving to 5 years. Therefore it is of importance to identify molecular changes that explain the pathogenesis of relapsed AML. Previous studies had not identified consistently acquired cytogenetic changes at relapse. Recently, acquired uniparental disomy due to mitotic recombination was described in 40% of relapsed AML (Raghavan et al 2008). Most of the events lead to homozygosity for FLT3 mutations. This study aimed to discover if there are further genetic abnormalities acquired at disease recurrence that cannot be identified by conventional cytogenetics, i.e. microdeletions or gains.

Twenty-one presentation and relapse paired AML patient blood and marrow samples were stored with consent at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Eleven patient samples had a normal karyotype at diagnosis, two had favourable prognosis cytogenetics (inv(16) and t(8;21)) and others had varying numerical cytogenetic abnormalities and rearrangements associated with an intermediate prognosis. DNA from the samples was analysed by array based high-resolution single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping (Affymetrix Human SNP array 6.0). Data was analysed using Partek Genome Browser (Partek, MO). In all cases, the leukemia infiltrate of the marrow or blood was greater than 60% and most cases were greater than 90% allowing accurate identification of DNA copy number changes. Abnormalities of a size that would be identified by cytogenetics were disregarded.

Using segmentation analysis using a p-value less than 0.001, over 400 microdeletions and gains were detected that were acquired at relapse in the 21 pairs. Each of the copy number changes was less than 2 megabases in size. One AML sample with a normal karyotype at diagnosis and trisomy 8 and add(9)(q34) at relapse had not acquired any microdeletions or gains. In contrast, in other samples as many as 69 microdeletions/gains were detected. There was no correlation between increased complexity of the karyotype of the leukemia and the number of microdeletions/gains. Several of the acquired microdeletions/gains were in regions containing genes known to be involved in AML, including a deletion of 234Kb at 13q12.2 involving FLT3 and CDX2, and an acquired deletion at 21p11.2 of 150Kb involving exons encoding the runt domain of RUNX1. Another copy number gain was detected at the MLL locus, suggestive of partial tandem duplication. Other detected locations are in Table 1.