Lineage plasticity in normal and malignant lymphocyte precursors

The classical scheme of hematopoiesis presumes early separation of lymphoid and myeloid precursors. Recently, more complex models are put forward, suggesting greater flexibility of hematopoiesis with progenitors sharing lymphoid and myeloid potential. Acute hybrid leukemia is a malignancy, in which it is not possible to assess unambiguously myeloid or lymphoid lineage of origin. The behaviour of those malignancies favors new models of hematopoiesis. Our work concentrated mainly on the research of childhood leukemias with lineage switch from lymphoid to myeloid lineage during induction treatment. Our task within this extensive project was to determine lineage assignment of leukemic blasts using detection of immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor gene rearrangements. We confirmed that myeloid cells derived during the treatment in all patients descend from the original lymphoid clone. We also investigated the expression of selected genes in those cases compared to common leukemia types. Lastly, we explored prognostic impact of TCR rearrangements (and thus lymphoid lineage commitment) in T-lineage leukemia