We have recently demonstrated that all-trans retinoic acid (RA), the active metabolite of vitamin A, is an efficient alternative to chemotherapy in the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia (AML3). We have further shown that, in these AML3 cells, the gene of the retinoic acid receptor-a (RARa) is translocated from chromosome 17 to chromosome 15, and fused to a new gene, PLM. This results in...

Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is typified by the t(15;17) translocation, which leads to the formation of the PML/RARA fusion gene and predicts a beneficial response to retinoids. However, approximately 10% of all APL cases lack the classic t(15;17). This group includes (1) cases with cryptic PML/RARA gene rearrangements and t(5;17) that leads to the NPM/RARA fusion gene, which are retinoid...

We present an acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) patient with two subtypes of IRF2BP2-RARA, in which the IRF2BP2 gene showed completely new breakpoints. Bone marrow examination revealed morphologic features indicative of APL. However, promyelocytic leukemia-RARA fusion was not detected. A paired-end mRNA sequencing followed by RT-PCR and direct sequencing revealed two types of fusion transcript...

The majority of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) manifest the t(15;17)(q24.1;q21.2) translocation; however, a minor but significant proportion of patients with APL harbor complex, cryptic, or variant translocations, which typically involve RARA. With the exception of ZBTB16/RARA, these variants have similar morphologic and immunophenotypic features as classic APL. Study of the v...

A hallmark of cancer cells is the ability to evade the growth inhibitory/pro-apoptotic action of physiological all-trans retinoic acid (RA) signal, the bioactive derivative of Vitamin A. However, as we and others reported, RA can also promote cancer cell growth and invasion. Here we show that anticancer and cancer-promoting RA actions in breast cancer have roots in a mechanism of mammary epithe...

Atypical breakpoints and variant APL cases involving alternative chromosomal aberrations are seen in a small subset of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) patients. Over seven different partner genes for RARA have been described. Although rare, these variants prove to be a diagnostic challenge and require a combination of advanced cytogenetic and molecular techniques for accurate characterizatio...

We have studied an acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) patient with a variant t(5;17)(q32;q12). This translocation fuses the gene for the nucleolar phosphoprotein nucleophosmin (NPM) to the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARA). Two alternatively spliced transcripts are expressed, which differ in 129 bases immediately upstream of the RARA sequence. The NPM sequences contained in the shorter NPM-RA...

Acute promyelocytic leukemia is characterized by the rearrangement of the retinoic acid receptor α (RARA) gene and its fusion with other genes. We report a novel case of variant acute promyelocytic leukemia with the karyotype der (2)t(2;17)(q32;q21). Array comparative genomic hybridization revealed distinct chromosome breakpoints within the RARA and oligonucleotide/oligosaccharide-binding fold ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Acute promyelocytic leukemia is characterized by the chromosomal translocation t(15;17) which yields the fusion product PML/RARa. All-trans retinoic acid probably induces differentiation of atypical promyelocytes and clinical remission in APL patients by binding to the ligand binding domain (LBD) of the RARa portion of the PML-RARa chimeric protein. Structural alteratio...

Retinoic acid is known to inhibit mammary carcinogenesis in rodents and to inhibit proliferation and steroid hormone receptor gene expression in human breast cancer cells. Since these effects are likely to be mediated by nuclear retinoic acid receptors (RARs) the present study was initiated to determine the expression and regulation of RARs in human breast cancer cell lines. Differential cellul...