Panoramic view of common fusion genes in a large cohort of Chinese de novo acute myeloid leukemia patients

Abstract

Fusion genes are major molecular biological abnormalities in hematological malignancies. This study aimed to depict the common recurrent gene-fusion landscape in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). 3135 de novo AML cases were enrolled and 36 recurrent fusion genes were assessed using multiplex-nested RT-PCR. Twenty-three distinct fusion genes were detected in 1292 (41.21%) cases. The incidence of fusion genes was higher in pediatric AML than in adult cases. The pediatric patients had higher incidences of RUNX1-RUNX1T1, KMT2A-MLLT3, KMT2A-MLLT10, KMT2A-MLLT11, KMT2A-MLLT6, and FUS-ERG, whereas KMT2A-PTD was more common in adult patients. The occurrence of molecular abnormalities involving the KMT2A gene and CBFB-MYH11 was lower in Chinese pediatric AML compared to Western reports. The incidence of RUNX1-RUNX1T1 was higher in both pediatric and adult patients in our study than in Western countries. This study provides a genetic landscape of common fusion genes in Chinese AML and confirms different incidences between age groups and races.

Keywords:

• Acute myeloid leukemia
• fusion genes
• pediatric
• adult

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Qing Yin, Hao Wang, and Wei Zhang for their work in clinical data collection and experimental procedures. We would like to thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for providing linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2018.1516876.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81370612; P.Z.) and the Youth Science Fund Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81102211; M.W.).