differential wnt gene expression in various subtypes of acute lymphoblastic leukemia

background: dysregulation of wnt signaling has been reported in many malignancies. objective: this study was conducted to investigate the expression pattern of 14 members of the wnt gene family in different immunophenotypic subtypes of all. methods: semi-quantitative rt-pcr was performed on samples from 71 all patients and 36 age-matched healthy individuals. the all patients were categorized into ball (76%), t-all (22.6%) and mixed lineage (1.4%) and the b-all cases were further classified into pro-b, pre-bi, pre-bii and immature/mature-b based on immunophenotypic results. results: among the wnt genes, wnt-7b (p=0.026), wnt-9a (p=0.020) and wnt-16b (p=0.023) were significantly over-expressed, whereas wnt- 2b (p=0.033), wnt-5a (p=0.016), wnt-7a (p