Relative expression of different Ikaros isoforms in childhood acute leukemia.

Ikaros is a zinc-finger transcriptional factor playing an essential role in lymphoid lineage commitment and differentiation. Animal models and analysis of human Ikaros in leukemic cells demonstrate deregulation of Ikaros expression. Short isoforms with a truncated DNA-binding domain suppress functions of Ikaros in a dominant-negative manner. Previous studies demonstrated that human leukemias are heterogeneous for Ikaros expression. We estimate the relative level of Ikaros mRNA transcripts in 80 childhood ALL cases in comparison with AML and healthy donor groups. We detected eight major isoforms and several minor mutant isoforms in most patients with acute lymphoblastic and myeloid leukemia and in healthy donors, but the relative level of expression varied. The relatively high level of Ik4A isoform, rarely mentioned in previous reports, was detected in all analyzed groups. The ratio between functional and all isoforms was used to determine functional activity of Ikaros. The ratio was significantly less in AML (p=0.027) and BCR-ABL positive ALL (p=0.0028) than in healthy bone marrow. We found a negative association between the Ikaros ratio and myeloid coexpression in B-cell ALL, the most prominent was for CD15. The Ikaros ratio positively correlates with CD5 and negatively with CD7 expression in T-ALL. We suggest that an anti-proliferation and anti-activation effect of full-length Ikaros may be mediated through regulation of CD5 and CD7.