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Spotlight on Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia

Variations on a theme: the alternate translocations in APL

Leukemia volume 16, pages 1927–1932 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

The t(15;17)(q22;q21) translocation is tightly linked to the APL phenotype, and the resultant PML-RAR fusion can be demonstrated in 98% of APL cases. Rare variant translocations have been reported, the majority of which on detailed analysis represent cryptic PML-RAR fusions. However, a handful of APL cases have been described with different genotypes. These include the t(11;17)(q23;q21) that produces the PLZF-RAR fusion, t(5;17)(q35;q21) that forms NPM-RAR, t(11;17)(q13;q21) that generates NUMA-RAR, and der(17) that creates STAT5b-RAR. In this review we will discuss these variant translocations, and discuss the insights that we have gained from their study.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Drs Pam Hershberger, Daniel Johnson, and Richard Steinman for careful reading of the manuscript and to Dr David Tweardy for sharing prepublication data. This work was supported in part by grants from the AICR (01A094) and the NIH (CA67346).

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    RL Redner

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Redner, R. Variations on a theme: the alternate translocations in APL. Leukemia 16, 1927–1932 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2402720

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