Final Report: Comparative Studies in the Field of Mouse and Human Leukemia, June 1, 1991 - October 31, 1994
Early in the work on this grant the authors established that the growth factor-dependence of radiation-induced thymic leukemia cells was dependent on the autocrine/paracrine growth factor IL-4. Localized, thymic leukemias always grew by virtue of an IL-4-driven autocrine/paracrine pathway. They continued and investigated the mechanism of progression of the thymic leukemias to the later, disseminate disease. Linking the generation of disseminated leukemias to their growth factor-dependent status [10,11], they found that the development of growth factor-independence was associated with the dissemination of the leukemia from the thymus to other sites, e.g. spleen, lymphnodes, liver and kidney [9,8]. Indeed, all disseminated leukemias were composed of growth factor-independent cells. The generation of disseminated radiation-induced leukemia is associated with the loss of specific differentiation antigens and the mutation of the p53 tumor suppressor gene. The thymic, growth factor-independent leukemia carried non-mutated, wild type p53 [4]. These results suggested that it might be possible to influence the dissemination [6,7] of leukemia cell propagation in vivo by the re-introduction of wild type p53 into the leukemias cells. They could show that the transduction of genes encoding specific mutant p53 proteins enhanced their dissemination potential and, in addition, the transduction of constructs encoding wild type p53 reversed the disseminated phenotype--and the leukemic phenotype--of murine and human acute leukemia cells. As a result of the DOE grant, and to further study the gene-transduction approach for the inhibition of leukemia and other cancer cells, they developed an acute retroviral gene transfer system that was capable of the rapid generation of high-titer retroviral virions that were non-mutated and non-deleted [12]. This system has been supplied to dozens of laboratories in the country and is widely used in many research laboratories.
- Research Organization:
- University of California, San Diego, CA (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Research (ER) (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG03-91ER61171
- OSTI ID:
- 765657
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 1 Dec 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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