Genetic aberrations involved in glucocorticoid-mediated response of ETV6/RUNX1-positive leukemia

The t(12;21) is the most frequent chromosomal translocation in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), generating the ETV6/RUNX1 (E/R) fusion gene, and generally associated with excellent initial treatment response. Relapses, however, occurring in up to 20% of cases, are often associated with drug resistance and dismal outcome. We recently reported on the particularly high frequency of genomic aberrations in genes involved in glucocorticoid (GC)-mediated apoptosis in E/R-positive relapsed leukemias (Kuster et al., Blood 2011). Here, we selected NR3C1, encoding the GC receptor (GR), for further validation a…