Frequent cases of RAS-mutated Down syndrome acute lymphoblastic leukaemia lack JAK2 mutations

Sergey I. Nikolaev, Marco Garieri, Federico Santoni, Emilie Falconnet, Pascale Ribaux, Michel Guipponi, Aoife Murray, Jürgen Groet, Emanuela Giarin, Giuseppe Basso, Dean Nizetic, Stylianos E. Antonarakis

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Abstract

Children with Down syndrome (DS) and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) have poorer survival and more relapses than non-DS children with ALL, highlighting an urgent need for deeper mechanistic understanding of DS-ALL. Here, using full-exome or cancer genes-targeted sequencing of 42 ALL samples from 39 DS patients, we uncover driver mutations in RAS, (KRAS and NRAS) recurring to a similar extent (15/42) as JAK2 (12/42) mutations or P2RY8-CRLF2 fusions (14/42). RAS mutations are almost completely mutually exclusive with JAK2 mutations (P=0.016), driving a combined total of two-thirds of analysed cases. Clonal architecture analysis reveals that both RAS and JAK2 drove sub-clonal expansions primarily initiated by CRLF2 rearrangements, and/or mutations in chromatin remodellers and lymphocyte differentiation factors. Remarkably, in 2/3 relapsed cases, there is a switch from a primary JAK2-or PTPN11-mutated sub-clone to a RAS-mutated sub-clone in relapse. These results provide important new insights informing the patient stratification strategies for targeted therapeutic approaches for DS-ALL.

Original languageEnglish
Article number4654
JournalNature Communications
Volume5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Aug 2014
Externally publishedYes

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