Investigation of the role of pre T Cell Receptor signalling in T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia

Introduction: Current T-ALL patients with refractory or relapsed disease represent a serious medical problem and require new treatment options. Pre-T cell Receptor (pTCR) signalling plays an important role in T cell development and provides essential anti-apoptosis and proliferative signals for naïve lymphocytes. Aberrant expression of pTCRa is found in more than 50% cases suggesting an oncogenic role of pTCR signalling. Methods: We hypothesize that the pTCRa complex promotes T-ALL cell survival, proliferation and self-renewal. We investigated a panel of T-ALL cell lines for pTCRa mRNA and cell surface expressio…