SUMMARY Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) manifests as phenotypically and functionally diverse cells, often within the same patient. Intratumor phenotypic and functional heterogeneity have been linked primarily by physical sorting experiments, which assume that functionally distinct subpopulations can be prospectively isolated by surface phenotypes. This assumption has proven problematic and we therefore developed a data-driven approach. Using mass cytometry, we profiled surface and intracellular signaling proteins simultaneously in millions of healthy and leukemic cells. We developed PhenoGraph, which algorithmically defines phenotypes in high-dimensional single-cell data. PhenoGraph revealed that the surface phenotypes of leukemic blasts do not necessarily reflect their intracellular state. Using hematopoietic progenitors, we defined a signaling-based measure of cellular phenotype, which led to isolation of a gene expression signature that was predictive of survival in independent cohorts. This study presents new methods for large-scale analysis of single-cell heterogeneity and demonstrates their utility, yielding insights into AML pathophysiology.

Chromosomal aberrations are a hallmark of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) but alone fail to induce leukaemia. To identify cooperating oncogenic lesions, we performed a genome-wide analysis of leukaemic cells from 242 paediatric ALL patients using high-resolution, single-nucleotide polymorphism arrays and genomic DNA sequencing. Our analyses revealed deletion, amplification, point mutation and structural rearrangement in genes encoding principal regulators of B lymphocyte development and differentiation in 40% of B-progenitor ALL cases. The PAX5 gene was the most frequent target of somatic mutation, being altered in 31.7% of cases. The identified PAX5 mutations resulted in reduced levels of PAX5 protein or the generation of hypomorphic alleles. Deletions were also detected in TCF3 (also known as E2A), EBF1, LEF1, IKZF1 (IKAROS) and IKZF3 (AIOLOS). These findings suggest that direct disruption of pathways controlling B-cell development and differentiation contributes to B-progenitor ALL pathogenesis. Moreover, these data demonstrate the power of high-resolution, genome-wide approaches to identify new molecular lesions in cancer.

Background Despite best current therapy, up to 20% of pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have a relapse. Recent genomewide analyses have identified a high frequency of DNA copy-number abnormalities in ALL, but the prognostic implications of these abnormalities have not been defined. Methods We studied a cohort of 221 children with high-risk B-cell–progenitor ALL with the use of single-nucleotide–polymorphism microarrays, transcriptional profiling, and resequencing of samples obtained at diagnosis. Children with known very-high-risk ALL subtypes (i.e., BCR-ABL1–positive ALL, hypodiploid ALL, and ALL in infants) were excluded from this cohort. A copy-number abnormality was identified as a predictor of poor outcome, and it was then tested in an independent validation cohort of 258 patients with B-cell–progenitor ALL. Results More than 50 recurring copy-number abnormalities were identified, most commonly involving genes that encode regulators of B-cell development (in 66.8% of patients in the original cohort); PAX5 was involved in 31.7% and IKZF1 in 28.6% of patients. Using copy-number abnormalities, we identified a predictor of poor outcome that was validated in the independent validation cohort. This predictor was strongly associated with alteration of IKZF1, a gene that encodes the lymphoid transcription factor IKAROS. The gene-expression signature of the group of patients with a poor outcome revealed increased expression of hematopoietic stem-cell genes and reduced expression of B-cell–lineage genes, and it was similar to the signature of BCR-ABL1–positive ALL, another high-risk subtype of ALL with a high frequency of IKZF1 deletion. Conclusions Genetic alteration of IKZF1 is associated with a very poor outcome in B-cell–progenitor ALL.

The Philadelphia chromosome, a chromosomal abnormality that encodes BCR-ABL1, is the defining lesion of chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML) and a subset of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). To define oncogenic lesions that cooperate with BCR-ABL1 to induce ALL, we performed a genome-wide analysis of diagnostic leukaemia samples from 304 individuals with ALL, including 43 BCR-ABL1 B-progenitor ALLs and 23 CML cases. IKZF1 (encoding the transcription factor Ikaros) was deleted in 83.7% of BCR-ABL1 ALL, but not in chronic-phase CML. Deletion of IKZF1 was also identified as an acquired lesion at the time of transformation of CML to ALL (lymphoid blast crisis). The IKZF1 deletions resulted in haploinsufficiency, expression of a dominant-negative Ikaros isoform, or the complete loss of Ikaros expression. Sequencing of IKZF1 deletion breakpoints suggested that aberrant RAG-mediated recombination is responsible for the deletions. These findings suggest that genetic lesions resulting in the loss of Ikaros function are an important event in the development of BCR-ABL1 ALL.

SUMMARY To define the mutation spectrum in non-Down syndrome acute megkaryoblastic leukemia (non-DS-AMKL), we performed transcriptome sequencing on diagnostic blasts from 14 pediatric patients and validated our findings in a recurrency/validation cohort consisting of 34 pediatric and 28 adult AMKL leukemia samples. Our analysis identified a cryptic chromosome 16 inversion [inv(16)(p13.3q24.3)] in 27% of pediatric cases, which encodes a CBFA2T3-GLIS2 fusion protein. Expression of CBFA2T3-GLIS2 in Drosophila and murine hematopoietic cells induced bone morphogenic protein (BMP) signaling, and resulted in a marked increase in the self-renewal capacity of hematopoietic progenitors. These data suggest that expression of CBFA2T3-GLIS2 directly contributes to leukemogenesis.