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Aberrant subcellular expression of nucleophosmin and NPM-MLF1 fusion protein in acute myeloid leukaemia carrying t(3;5): A comparison with NPMc+ AML

Leukemia volume 20, pages 368–371 (2006)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 09 March 2006

Nucleophosmin (NPM) is an ubiquitously expressed multifunctional protein.1 Although NPM is known to shuttle back and forth between the nucleus and the cytoplasm,2 only a minimum amount of the protein is present at any time in the cytoplasm; this explains why with immunohistochemistry NPM is only detectable at the nucleolar level.3 We previously showed that NPM is aberrantly expressed in the cytoplasm of anaplastic large cell lymphoma cells carrying t(2;5), due to the presence of the NPM-ALK fusion protein.3 Ectopic NPM expression parallels that of ALK protein and serves as a highly specific diagnostic test on routine biopsies.3

The t(3;5)(q25;q35) is a rare chromosomal translocation which is detected in myelodysplastic syndromes and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML),4 more frequently of FAB-M6 type. Similarly to the t(2;5) in lymphomas, it generates a chimeric gene named NPM-myelodysplasia/myeloid leukaemia factor 1 (NPM-MLF1)5 which encodes for a fusion protein containing the N-terminal portion of NPM (amino acids 1–175) linked to almost the entire MLF1 protein as only the initial 16 amino acids at the N-terminus are excluded.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC) and MURST. Supported in part by NCI Grant CA 76301 and CA 69179 (SWM), NCI Cancer Center CORE grant CA 21765 and by the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC), S. Jude Children's Research Hospital. We thank Dr Xiaoli Cui for the expert technical assistance.

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Author notes

  1. E Tiacci

    Present address: Section of Molecular Genetics, Institute for Cell Biology – Tumor Research, University of Duisburg-Essen Medical School, Essen, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Hematology, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

    B Falini, B Bigerna, A Pucciarini, E Tiacci, C Mecucci, N Bolli, R Rosati, R Pacini, R La Starza, B V Galletti, M P Martelli & M F Martelli

  2. Departments of Pathology and Hematology-Oncology, St Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

    S W Morris, S Hanissian, Z Ma & Y Sun

  3. Department of Experimental Oncology, European Institute of Oncology (IEO), Milan, Italy

    E Colombo & P-g Pelicci

  4. Department of Pathology, Stanford University, CA, USA

    D A Arber

  5. Institute of Hematology, University of Foggia, Italy

    A Liso

  6. Institute of Hematology, University ‘La Sapienza’, Rome, Italy

    D Diverio

  7. Institute of Hematology, University Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    F L Coco

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to B Falini.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on Leukemia website (http://www.nature.com/leu)

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Falini, B., Bigerna, B., Pucciarini, A. et al. Aberrant subcellular expression of nucleophosmin and NPM-MLF1 fusion protein in acute myeloid leukaemia carrying t(3;5): A comparison with NPMc+ AML. Leukemia 20, 368–371 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2404068

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