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A discriminating screening is necessary to ascertain EVI1 expression by RT-PCR in malignant cells from the myeloid lineage without 3q26 rearrangement

Leukemia volume 17, pages 643–645 (2003)Cite this article

TO THE EDITOR

It is generally accepted that EVI1, inappropriately expressed in hematopoietic cells after rearrangements of the 3q26 chromosomal band, is also aberrantly expressed in leukemic samples without 3q26 abnormality, which is the site of the EVI1 locus.1,2 EVI1 was initially described in murine myeloid leukemia, where it was shown to be activated by proviral insertion in the Evi-1 common integration site.3 More recently, EVI1 was shown to be part of a fusion gene named MDS1–EVI1, which results from the in-frame splicing of EVI1 and MDS1, a gene mapped 150–300 kb upstream of EVI1.4 Based on Fears et al data,4 the sequence of EVI1 after the MDS1–EVI1 splice junction starts with the second exon of EVI1 as reported by Morishita et al5 and continues to the end of Morishita's EVI1 cDNA. Hence, EVI1 and MDS1–EVI1 transcripts share a strong homology in nucleotide sequences, the two transcripts differing only at their extreme 5′ ends where they have unique sequences.4 The amplified products that have been detected, using common primers, by several authors1,2 in leukemic samples without 3q26 rearrangement could therefore belong to MDS1–EVI1 rather than EVI1. To shed some light on this issue, we designed primers specific for the 5′ end of both genes. Taking advantage of an RNA collection, we performed a discriminating screening between MDS1–EVI1 and EVI1 by RT-PCR in 34 samples obtained from patients with myeloid neoplasms (Table 1) referred to our laboratory for routine cytogenetic and molecular diagnoses (BCR-ABL transcript detection). Previous analyses had proved all 34 specimens to be positive by RT-PCR, using primers described in the literature,5 for the common distal 3′ end of RTMDS1–EVI1 and EVI1, and negative for 3q26 chromosomal band rearrangements by routine conventional and molecular cytogenetics (whole-chromosome painting with a probe specific for chromosome 3). We report that MDS1–EVI1 was expressed in all 34 analyzed cases. In contrast, EVI1 was expressed in only seven patients, concomitantly to the MDS1–EVI1 transcript.

Table 1 Results of the RT-PCR screening allowing discrimination between MDS1–EVI1 and EVI1 RNAs (34 patients with myeloid neoplasms were included in the study)
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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by le Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, the Association pour la Recherche contre le Cancer (ARC Commission Grand Sud), the Ligue Nationale Française Contre le Cancer, and the Fondation contre la Leucémie. GN is a Scholar of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cytogenetic Laboratory, Nice, France

    D Zoccola & S D Raynaud

  2. Department of Hematology/Internal Medecine, University Hospital, Nice, France

    L Legros, P Cassuto & J G Fuzibet

  3. Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Cancer Center, Chicago, IL, USA

    G Nucifora

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  1. D Zoccola
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  2. L Legros
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Zoccola, D., Legros, L., Cassuto, P. et al. A discriminating screening is necessary to ascertain EVI1 expression by RT-PCR in malignant cells from the myeloid lineage without 3q26 rearrangement. Leukemia 17, 643–645 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2402859

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