Chronic myelocytic leukemia: clonal origin in a stem cell common to the granulocyte, erythrocyte, platelet and monocyte/macrophage.

Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G-6-PD) isoenzymes types of granulocytes were determined in eight women with chronic myelocytic leukemia (CML). The patients were heterozygous at the X-linked G-6-PD locus for the common gene, GdB, and a variant, such as GdA, so that both B and A enzyme types were found in skin cells. In contrast to these normal cells, only one G-6-PD type was found in CML granulocytes. The fact that such single-enzyme phenotypes are found in CML granulocytes, but not in nonleukemic granulocytes, provides strong evidence that the disease has a clonal origin. Single-enzyme phenotypes were also found in erythrocytes, platelets and cultured blood macrophages indicating that these cells have a common stem cell which is the site of the abnormality in CML. In the one studied patient, no evidence was found for involvement of cultured marrow fibroblasts. Clonal origin of CML virtually excludes cell recruitment as a sole pathogenetic mechanism. Either the leukemia arises as a consequence of a rare initial event in a single cell, or a series of events occurs in a clone such that it evolves into CML, or both.