Biologists discover gene deletion behind abnormality in blood cancer cells
The mystery is being unraveled of why the control centers, or nuclei, of certain blood cancer cells have a distinctly odd shape.These squeezed-in-the-middle nuclei, which resemble pince-nez glasses, are called Pelger-Huët anomalies.
Although this structural change inside blood cells indicates possible cancer, until a recent study, no one knew what caused it to happen.
Doulatovand and his team wanted to get to the molecular root of these cancers. They assumed something was lurking in the genome of the more primitive progenitor, or stem cells, which go on to create blood cell lineages.
What determines the fate of these progenitor cells that causes the emergence of cancerous cells, rather than normal neutrophils?
Myeloid cells themselves can sometimes show abnormal, precancerous changes. The researchers on this recent study were able to cast suspicion on the loss of nuclear lamin B1, encoded on chromosome 5q. It is frequently deleted in cells examined from abnormally growing myeloid tissue. Evidence from this study suggests this loss is at fault in the misshapen nuclei.
Lamin B1 loss was both necessary and sufficient to cause the Pelger-Huët anomalies, according to the researchers.
The study also implicates nuclear lamin B1 as a master regulator of cell fate specification in blood-forming stem cells, of genome integrity and nuclear morphology.
The latest genomic findings and their consequences for aberrant transformations in blood-forming cells may be important in the future of leukemia care. The presence of these changes, the researchers said, may be an early cancer biomarker, whose detection could permit for earlier diagnosis and treatment of leukemias.
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